Wim Wenders
Perfect Days

Komorebi is a Japanese word that means: "the light filtering through the trees."

This is not the only way to interpret Perfect Days, the latest film by Wim Wenders, which delicately and simply narrates some days in the routine life of a sixty-year-old Japanese public restroom cleaner, scattered throughout the various locations of a bright, clean, and orderly Tokyo, played by the talented Koji Yakuso, an actor already fully appreciated in "Babel" and "The Third Murder."

The film does not require special lenses to deepen its understanding, as with the interpretation I proposed at the beginning and which is communicated to us at the end of the viewing. It is actually just additional information that makes us understand how in the Japanese language there is a single word to describe something (the play of light and shadow caused by the sun's rays filtering through the leaves of the trees) that in our language can only be rendered through an entire complex sentence.

And if this is also the leitmotif that punctuates all the morning outings, the lunch breaks in the park, and the nightly dreams of this solitary and taciturn janitor who carries out his humble work every day with precision, punctuality, rigor and, I would also add, without fear of contradiction, with "love," the viewer is left with no choice but to let themselves be guided in this daily and repeated game, interrupted only by brief occasional variations (the romantic needs of a young unlucky colleague with a good heart, the appearance of a niece who opens a brief window to a past probably to be forgotten and/or forgotten, an enigmatic game of tic-tac-toe and other brief encounters) without having to think of anything other than the poetic flow of the images.

Koji Yakuso brings to life a character of such exquisite kindness and such refined manners that instead of creating a contrast with the nature of his humble job, he even manages to ennoble it.

His serenity is almost never disturbed, and the few times it is, it is immediately restored by the smiling gaze directed towards the sky to capture, photograph, and methodically preserve the komorebi.

The film completely relies on his shoulders and his facial expressiveness (especially the eyes), given his constant laconicism, and is enriched by famous music from the 60s and 70s, which he listens to daily thanks to old audiotapes. Among these stands out the beautiful "Perfect Day" by Lou Reed, which gives the film its title and is also reprised in a piano-only version during the end credits.

It is a film where nothing extraordinary happens, except perhaps that any life, even the most common and anonymous, is in itself extraordinary if lived with fullness and serenity, completing one's task every day and pausing, whenever possible, to recharge the spirit, managing to glimpse that something extra that flickers between lights and shadows amidst the green of the leaves.