Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days” is set among the crowded skyscrapers of Tokyo and the quiet urban parks that Hirayama traverses daily in his job cleaning public toilets. Hirayama says little throughout the course of Wenders’ quiet, quotidian film. Think of Harry Dean Stanton’s dusty drifter in “Paris, Texas,” or Bruno Ganz’s terminally ill man in “The American Friend.” But the …
Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days” is set among the crowded skyscrapers of Tokyo and the quiet urban parks that Hirayama traverses daily in his job cleaning public toilets. Think of Harry Dean Stanton’s dusty drifter in “Paris, Texas,” or Bruno Ganz’s terminally ill man in “The American Friend.” But the Wenders’ movie that “Perfect Days” most recalls is “Wings of Desire,” …
A popular figure in Japanese cinema over the past four decades, Koji Yakusho is pretty recognizable to most of his countrymen. “They saw me, and they took some pictures, and that became an article of ‘Why is this famous person holding these cleaning utensils?’ But I don’t think the general public noticed very much.” In the original tale from legendary …
