There is a moment early in Perfect Days — Wim Wenders, 2023 — where Hirayama tilts his face up through the windshield of his cleaning van at the light coming through the trees, and the film holds on that look for longer than it needs to. Not a reaction shot. Not a bridge to the next scene. Just a man looking at light through leaves, and the film trusting that this is enough.
I saw it on Tuesday evening at Cinema Nova, alone in the back third of the auditorium. Late session, maybe a dozen people in the room. That kind of sparseness suits it — it would have felt strange to watch in a crowd.
The film is structured almost liturgically: wake, work, eat, sleep, repeat. Wenders doesn't vary this rhythm until it needs to vary, and the discipline is precise. What carries each day forward is the cassette deck in Hirayama's van — the Animals, Van Morrison, the Velvet Underground's "Pale Blue Eyes" played without context or commentary. The tapes are not explained. The music is not curated for our benefit. It is simply there, the way music is when it belongs to someone's life rather than to a soundtrack.