There’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever why Koji Yakusho won Best Actor for his performance in Perfect Days at the Cannes Film Festival. Even in light of Cillian Murphy and Bill Nighy’s tremendous and rightly celebrated recent work in Oppenheimer and Living respectful, I can’t recall a performance that has been this essential, the very heart and soul of the film, in a very long time. Earth shakingly powerful in its subtlety both in Yakusho’s performance and the leisurely pace of the film, Perfect Days is a celebration as well as a clarion call in a saturated, bustling world to find the beauty and extraordinary in the ordinary. One of 2024’s best films.

Hirayama seems utterly content with his simple life as a cleaner of toilets in Tokyo. Outside of his very structured everyday routine he enjoys his passion for music and for books. And he loves trees and takes photos of them. A series of unexpected encounters gradually reveal more of his past. A deeply moving and poetic reflection on finding beauty in the everyday world around us.

For the less patient, the pace and substance of Perfect Days will potentially start to drag. But that just beautifully reinforces one of the pertinent points of the film. In a world with an ever fleeting attention span, Perfect Days calls us, like a cinematic sermon, back to the ground, back to taking our time and paying attention to the world around us.

Because that is the gift that Hirayama has here. While he works very hard at his cleaning job, he has time to enjoy watching the trees gently dancing in the breeze, to listen to his favorite music on cassette tape, and to read all the $1 books he can purchase.

There is the temptation with a film like this that it could romanticize its central themes. But Perfect Days also gives us heartbreak in the small, Hirayama’s van breaking down, and in the relationships that surround his life. 

 

While aided by a superbly nuanced central performance, the cinematography helps to capture Hirayama’s purposefully slow life but the stark contrast of the busy world around him. It, like the rest of the film, is subtle, but awe striking in its beauty, allowing us to rest and soak a while in it all. 

 

Earth shakingly powerful in its subtlety both in Yakusho’s performance and the leisurely pace of the film, Perfect Days is a celebration as well as a clarion call in a saturated, bustling world to find the beauty in the extraordinary ordinary. One of 2024’s best films.