PERFECT DAYS
WHEN KŌJI HASHIMOTO won the Best Actor award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for his role as Hirayama, a Tokyo toilet cleaner in Perfect Days, one person who wasn’t the slightest bit surprised was the film’s director, Wim Wenders. “I predicted it!” he proudly tells Empire. “It’s a modest little film but we knew we had a movie with a great character and a great actor. I thought if we had a chance, it was in Best Actor.”
The project started when Wenders was invited to make a series of mini-documentaries about the architects who created some of Japan’s greatest outdoor lavatories. The filmmaker thought there was more to be done so, along with Takuma Takasaki, fashioned a narrative detailing the routine of without doubt cinema’s greatest toilet attendant. “I started to develop this caretaker and he became my dream character,” Wenders explains. “One I’ve always wanted to show in a movie —somebody who had little but was happy with what he had. He’s open, gentle, and loves music and reading. Hirayami is my favourite character ever because he’s everything I like.”
Wenders has made films in Japan previously, including Tokyo-Ga, a documentary tribute to his filmmaking idol Yasujirō Ozu — “I always considered him to be the paradise of filmmaking ” —but the 78-year-old German auteur has found his own way into channelling his hero. “Ozu’s influence is not in the language I shoot in,” says Wenders, “but I think this film was made perfectly in the spirit of his films —his respect for details and the respect for every human being is present.”
Kōji Hashimoto (left) as gentle bathroom attendant Hirayama.