PERFECT DAYS — Wim Wenders cures his post-pandemic blues

Legendary filmmaker Wim Wenders returns to the show to tell host Rico Gagliano about his Cannes-winning, Oscar-nominated PERFECT DAYS—the story of a Tokyo toilet cleaner who finds joy in routine. They also get into a few of Wenders’s favorite things: Japan, travel, Nina Simone, and having time on his hands.

PERFECT DAYS will stream exclusively on MUBI in the UK, India, Turkey, and Latin America starting April 12, and the film continues to show in cinemas in the UK & Ireland.

To stream more Wenders classics, check out our series "Wim Wenders: King of the Road." Availability of films varies depending on your country.

Last summer at the Cannes Film Festival, Rico interviewed Wenders about his 3D documentary ANSELM—watch it here.

And hear Rico wax rhapsodic about Wenders’s WINGS OF DESIRE—and the formative experience of bingeing on it in a derelict movie palace—in the opening minutes of this episode from our second season.

To stream more of the films we've covered on the podcast, check out the collection Featured on the MUBI Podcast. Availability of films varies depending on your country.

MUBI is a global streaming service, production company and film distributor dedicated to elevating great cinema. MUBI makes, acquires, curates, and champions extraordinary films, connecting them to audiences all over the world. A place to discover ambitious new films and singular voices, from iconic directors to emerging auteurs. Each carefully chosen by MUBI’s curators.

Transcript

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Heads up, this episode includes spoilers. So a movie about a man who is perfectly happy to clean toilets for a living. Not, not the most obvious subject of a Wim Wenders movie, really, any movie really,- No. I don't want to see that.- What was-- What was the inspiration? Um, the inspiration was... Tokyo. That is German director Wim Wenders, and like a lot of his movies his new one <i>Perfect Days</i> is indeed a look at a place far from his home, and at a quiet hero who goes with the flow. His name is Hirayama, a middle aged guy whose job is to clean a series of public toilets around Tokyo and who's 100% cool with that. Hirayama, you see, thrives on routine. Every morning he leaves his little place, buys a drink from the machine outside his door, drives to work as the sun rises. Takes photos of trees on his lunch break. His simple mostly solitary days feel yeah, perfect. Until a niece appears at his door and he's reminded of the complicated world he had to leave behind to live like he does. And the complicated people in it. I'm Rico Galiano, getting over a cold, welcome back to the MUBI Podcast. MUBI's the streaming service the champions great cinema. On this show we tell you the stories behind great cinema. Season six is in the works. Meanwhile, here is another special episode. It's my interview with Wim Wenders about <i>Perfect Days</i>. Last summer its star Kôji Yakusho won best actor at Cannes for this film. Last month the movie was up for best international film at the Oscars, and it streams on MUBI in the UK, India, Latin America, and many other countries starting April 12th. Regular listeners know I have been a Wenders fanboy ever since his Cannes winner <i>Wings of Desire</i> played at the art house I worked at in college. He's also a hell of a documentarian. Last year, I spoke to him about his 3D doc <i>Anselm</i> about artist Anselm Kiefer. This time around, you'll hear us talk about his lead actor, his wanderlust and his four year stab at conquering America. But first we talked about Tokyo, a city he has shot many times. I asked him why it drew him back. The inspiration was to have lived through the pandemic and expecting that life afterwards would be glorious and that we'd all learn and we'd all have different lives and that our societies would be better places. And then it was over, the pandemic was over and life was worse than before. At least in Berlin and in Europe and in America where I was, it seemed like the sense of the common good was down the drain. Everybody was in it for him or herself, more than before. And then I came to Tokyo to look at this social project this art project, maybe make a couple of documentaries on these architects who had built these amazing toilets. And I realized in Tokyo things were happening differently. In Tokyo the sense of the common good was still alive. The way the people of Tokyo came back after the pandemic and I was there that week was endearing and respectful and caring and they took care of their places. And when they had a party, they would pick up every cigarette butt and every bottle and schlep them home. And I realized, wow, that's what I was hoping for. And that is actually much more with my first film after the pandemic. And I could-- should not shoot it as a documentary. I shoot it as a story. Stories are so much more emotional and, and even these toilets as a documentary subject, it's not so interesting. But if somebody goes there who has a purpose, it's better. Why don't you tell us about these toilets? Because they're not just any toilets for folks who haven't seen the film. Oh, no, they are not like any toilets you've ever seen in your life. This is a beautiful project because it was an art project. Really, the Tokyo toilet was initially an art project and this crazy guy asked these famous architects if they could envision instead of building banks and museums and skyrises to build something very small, a public toilet. And they all liked the challenge and 15 great architects agreed to do it. And this was going to be a present to the city of Tokyo to open for the Olympics. It was like to show the world a little bit of Japanese hospitality. That's how it was born. And then the Olympics didn't take place. They were postponed to the next year as you remember. And even next year, and the next year, nobody came, they were taking place in empty stadiums. And this beautiful social and art project went unknown. And that's why these guys called me and said"Wim, we know you love Tokyo."We know you're very interested in architecture."Come over here and look at these toilets and maybe they inspire you to something." And we thought maybe you could make a couple of interesting documentaries about these architects and their creations. And that's why I came. And you want to describe like what some of these things look like, like what makes them so special? Well, they are all different. They're all made to measure for a small park here, a nice little shaded area there. And none of them looks like any toilet you've ever seen, especially the transparent ones. You can see through them. You see the toilet and you see the wash basin, you see everything and you're afraid to go in because you're not going to go sit down in the toilet with everybody seeing you and then you see somebody else going in and closing the door and then they became opaque. And once you're, you've dared to go in and lock the door and you're all of a sudden in a glass cage and the sun throws all the shadows of the trees on these panels and you are in the middle of nature and you're on your own. And this is a very beautiful civilized place. The toilet opens up on its own. It has a heated seat. You don't even have to use damn paper because these toilets all have little showers and they do something magnificent. They clean you from below. And afterward you get used to being pampered, but I didn't want to make these movies about these toilets because I realized there was something bigger going on. And that was the Japanese people and their way of coming back and taking possession of the city again. That was really moving. And that's when I came up with the idea. Let me use the same time to tell a story. I need a good script and a great actor. Let's talk about the the actor. His name is Kôji Yakusho He's in basically every scene and he has to carry it with this kind of, I would call it a benevolent quiet. He doesn't say very much at all. And that's the point. How did you pick him? He's a legendary actor. He's been in a million movies. But how did you pick him as the guy who could pull that off? Because I knew he could pull it off. He once in my life pulled off the impossible. You see, as a film director, I had a job in the Wenders family already, since the eighties. We always, when the entire family at Christmas went to see a movie and it was always a disaster. You can only lose if you try to take three generations to the same movie. And the only time it was glorious was sometime in the mid-90s when I showed them all <i>Shall We Dance?</i> With Kōji Yakusho. Not the American remake, but the Japanese original. And this was the only film where everybody came out and was happy. all generation, the old and the young, and I realized this actor can do something that other actors can't. It's his eyes, it's his eyes, he can do things with, with his eyes that no other actors can, and he has the kindest eyes in the world. And that's why when I said, let's make a movie and I need a good script and a good actor, I knew there was only one guy who can play this part. That was Kōji Yakusho. How quickly did you have to pull this project together? Well, I had to go back to Germany. I had only intended to come for a week to look at these toilets and make up my mind if I could do something, I had to go back two days later, they said Kōji Yakusho give us a day and the next day they came and said, yes, Kōji will be in it if there's a script or not. And so I could, I could write the story for him. I took Takuma Takasaki, my co-author, who was the guy who invited me in the first place we knew for whom we were writing, we knew the places, we had a good sense how fast we had to shoot it. And we wrote a more and more free character who enjoyed his life, even if he was cleaning toilets. And we got to talk about the character that you come up with who was so happy. He's a man of a certain age, I will say, his hobby is taking photographs. You're also a photographer. He listens to songs that I bet show up on your own mixtapes pretty regularly, I mean, there are a couple of Lou Reed tunes and Lou was in your movies.- In three of them.- Yeah. How much is this character you? He is totally a fictional character but I gave him everything I liked. I gave him photography. I gave him time. I gave him a car in which he can listen to music and he drives every morning to work. And this is the road movie that <i>Perfect Days</i> is also. And in the end, this man lives a life in which he is completely at ease. He's not missing anything. And the more you follow his routine, the more you see the world through his eyes, he's a master of his own time. And that's what we all longing for. We'd love to be masters of our time. We love to be not pushed by our own routines and by all the tools that steal our time instead of giving us more. And this man doesn't have any of the tools. He doesn't even have a television. He reads in the evening, he reads books and he only reads one book and finishes it and puts it in his shelf and then he goes and buys one more. He doesn't buy a stack. He only buys used books because a used book, it's the same stuff that's in it than in the new book and then he finishes it the next week and then he buys the next one. And you slowly realize how much sense that makes you only live in the moment and only live for your basic needs. You, on the other hand, though, you mentioned, this is a guy who doesn't even have a television. This is a guy who's embrace of technology, basically ended after the invention of the cassette tape. There's a whole subplot revolving around the fact that he only listens to cassette tapes. But you seem like someone who's fascinated with technology. You made a 3D documentary this year, one of the many that you've made, but you admire this about him on some level. I think, his rejection of technology. Why is that? It's not his rejection of technology, it's his reduction to the essential and the essential is never the technology. And the essential of music is the music, not how it's played. If you have a Hi-Fi $100,000 system at your home, or if you listen to it on a cassette recorder, you can have more fun on your cassette recorder if you have the time to listen. If you don't have time and you have an expensive system, it's worth nothing. And he found this cassette recorder in the attic, it was left over from his youth. And he realized in that time in the seventies, music mattered to him. Music was very important to him. He loved his songs. And then he became somebody else. He became a businessman and we don't know much about this life that he had. We only know that at one point, he made a choice to live a different life and he found his old cassette recorder and brought it back and realized he only needed that music that mattered so much to him. But is this, I have to ask you because of all the things that you're saying I could so easily apply to you. I mean, somebody who like, the seventies was a great time for music, was listening to stuff on cassette probably. Is this wish fulfillment on some level for you? Like you wish you could be this guy. It's not just me, you follow his life, and after a while you realize there is a deep longing in yourself to simplify your life. To be Hirayama wouldn't be bad. I mean, even the coolest dudes I know come out and they are crying and they realized that Hirayama showed them an alternative and that they have options to imitate him. Imitate him here or there. Nobody is ready to live in a one room place, with nothing. But they all realize he has a point with his reduction. But you don't shy away from the fact that this is not all roses. There's a cautionary tale in here too because he knows that to live this way, he has to disconnect from the modern world, to a certain point. And by the end, he seems to acknowledge that he's had to sacrifice to,- to live this life.- Yeah. Is the sacrifice worth it, you're saying? I think you see it on his face. The answer is on his face. The last scene is three minutes on his face and you can read it and you know what he thinks and you know, he has doubts and you know, in the end, he's happy that he made the right decision. Tell me about that last shot actually because it's, I find it just amazing. It's just a still shot on Kōji's face as he cycles through these feelings. To me, he's going through many feelings of joy and of sorrow. And you've got the Nina Simone song<i>Feeling Good</i> over it. First of all, tell me how you landed on that song, I'd like to know. That song for the longest time was just a frontis piece of our script because the lyrics of that song describe Hirayama's nature to me and his way of living in the present and the lyrics are his character. And we had it in front of the script to remind us like sometimes in a book or novel, you, the first page is a poem or a quote or something. We had, we had Nina Simone. And then we wrote in all the songs of the film because we realized the man doesn't talk much and he chooses his music carefully. He's sort of DJing his day. So we thought we have to put it in the script. Music helps us tell the story, it's part of the storytelling. So we wrote all the songs in. And then we shot it. And the more we shot, the more we realized that Nina Simone song in the beginning was the best way to end the movie. So Nina Simone led us to that last shot and- Oh really?- Yes, and I made sure that Kōji Yakusho my actor understood each and every word of it and that the entire song is sort of visible on his face. When we shot it, we only did two takes, one from the side and one in real traffic. I mean, he drives a crummy, tiny little old van and he's actually driving it in Tokyo traffic and there's four people with him in the car, my cameraman on the passenger seat, sound man in the back, the camera assistant and me were cramped way back with my little ipad on my knees in order to see the scene. And I looked at the iPad and he put the cassette in...<i>Birds flying high You know how I feel</i> Sun in the sky You know how I feel And they started listening after a while I said, wow, what is this? What is he doing? I didn't know that an actor can laugh and cry at the same time and that he can really show you his entire inner self just listening to a song.<i>And I'm feeling good</i> And then I looked at my cameraman and realized Franz wasn't looking through the camera anymore. He was just holding the camera and weeping, tears streaming down his face and looking at me desperately. Is this still the good frame? I mean, because he couldn't see it anymore.- So I needed to...- Oh my god, through the tears. Yeah, I needed to help him frame it through his tears. And that was the end of the movie. Was it the last shot you took? Yes, it was the very last shot I feel like this is a different and beautiful kind of film for you. And since it's about aging, it reminded me of something that Martin Scorsese actually said recently in an interview. That he felt like Akira Kurasawa did late in his career because Kurasawa said something like"I now see so much more of what's possible in cinema, but I don't have time left to do it all." And I wonder what your take is on that, what your feeling is on this. You're clearly not as advanced in years as Martin Scorsese,- Well...- But... Kurosawa very late in his life made the most amazing film called <i>Dreams</i>, which was the first electronic thing he did on high definition video. First time he did composite imagery. I mean, he started to see the future of filmmaking and maybe he was a little regretting that he saw it so late. And it's quite a departure for a man who is the master of elements of snow and rain and hail and of period movies and of summer rise and of lots of movies. And all of a sudden he discovers the future. Do you feel any of that yourself? Because I see you doing the same thing. It's like you came to 3D, you know, a few years ago. Well, I'm exploring it since the beginning.<i>Buena Vista Social Club</i> was the first all around digital movie. And...- And is that right?- It is right. And...<i>Pina</i> was the first 3D documentary ever shot. And it was done before<i>Avatar</i> was even out. I only heard that Cameron was making a 3D movie and it was my big hope that he would do so because then there would be a few theaters that could show this format. And I'm eternally grateful to Cameron and I love <i>Avatar</i>. Oh my god, I love the idea of <i>Avatar</i>- paving the way- It did! For your documentary about a German choreographer. It did. It really did because people laughed at me when I was shooting <i>Pina</i> on prototype cameras in 3D. And then when <i>Pina</i> was done, there were 100 theaters in Germany to play. Thanks to James Cameron. I would not have traced that thread in cinema history. Who could have thunk it? You mentioned very early on how this is a movie in a way It's a love letter to Tokyo as much as anything. And one of the reasons I love talking to you is you're a world traveler. There's this globe trotting nature to your work about trying to capture places as well as people. I have said on this very show that one of the reasons I got into traveling and uh travel writing is from seeing<i>Wings of Desire</i> because it made Berlin seem so fascinating and beautiful. Your company is called Road Movies. When did this sort of wanderlust develop? When I was a little boy, I wanted to travel. I wanted to leave Germany behind since I remember. I left Germany already on a bicycle. I didn't even have a car. I always tried to get out and only through a long time in America. And only after making, finally making a film in America that I was happy with, which was <i>Paris, Texas</i> I returned to Germany. And it allowed me to return and I had accepted that I was a German and<i>Wings of Desire</i> that you quoted, as the film of a homecoming man. And it's the film of somebody who's accepted that he was German and he could finally shoot his own country as if it was a new territory. What about the shooting in America made that possible for you? Well, I thought I could become an American director. I mean, naively, I thought I had it in me to make American movies. And I realized shooting a film fo over 4 years for Zoetrope Studios and Francis Ford Coppola that I was never going to be an American director. And I was always going to remain a German romantic and that I was a German at heart and a European filmmaker. And if I was gonna make a movie in America, then I could do it as a European production in America where I could never make an American movie. And that reflection brought me to <i>Paris, Texas</i> and that was not an American film. It was a film in America by a European filmmaker. And that's when I finally realized what I was doing. What was the Zoetrope film? That was <i>Hammett</i>.- It was a fictional film.- Oh, that's right. On the writer, Dashiel Hammett, who was a detective. And then because he had pneumonia, slowly had to give up his physical job and write about it. And And that was a very beautiful script about a man who was torn between a detective and writing about detective work. And a beautiful film. That took four years? It took four years and 40 different scripts and four different writers. And we shot it two times. We shot it once on, on location in San Francisco. And then the studio didn't like it, not Francis. Francis was torn but Orion, which was the studio that had ordered it a thought it was not enough action and too much about the writer and not about the detective. And so in the end, I had to shoot the whole thing one more time and I was too stubborn to give it up and Francis was too loyal to me to fire me. So we stuck it out and we shot the film a second time and this time in Los Angeles on the back lot. I got it and I can imagine, so that's the experience that makes you go, you know what I'm a European filmmaker at heart... Well, I had to learn it the hard way. You mentioned you were fascinated with America and you know, that goes back to<i>The American Friend</i> and <i>Paris, Texas</i> obviously, you've just mentioned. Is the fascination still there? The fascination for the landscape is still there, and for the idea of America. And for what America represents, I still love America and I still love what it represents even if it has it has pretty much gone down the drain lately. But then again, I still love the American landscape. I love the West. I love the cities. I love Americans a lot. But I don't know right now, I'm... very ambiguous about this reign of lies and dividedness and inability to talk with each other. That is for me, very painful right now. Yeah, this actually reminds me the first time I interviewed you, we talked about what I think is a very optimistic cosmopolitan view of the world. And a lot of times in your movies, you have characters from multiple countries speaking multiple languages. But we're here in this time of more wars of less trust between countries, of closing borders. The things that you've just mentioned about the US. Are you still optimistic? I'm a born optimist. I still think optimists, only optimists can change the word. Nega-- I mean, pessimists never get anywhere. So I'm an optimist by nature, but also by decision because there were pessimists that wouldn't even know how to do a movie anymore. I don't have any cynicism in me and that is an old fashioned thing. Maybe that's because I was born right after the war in such a hopeful new beginning. So I can't make anything that's cynical and, or pessimist, I can only do some, I can only make movies with happy ends. Or at least happy / beautifully sad end. Yes beautifully sad is even better. Wim Wenders. His Oscar nominated, Cannes winning <i>Perfect Days</i> arrives on MUBI in the UK, India, Latin America and many other countries starting April 12th. Also coming soon in many countries, we are showing a slate of classic Wenders films. We are calling it'Wim Wenders, King of the Road' check the show notes for details. And that wraps this episode of the MUBI Podcast. Next time Cannes 2024 is coming up and as a preview I'm gonna give you a firsthand tour through some of the weirder wonderful sides of the festival that you generally don't read about in magazines. Among our guests will be once again Wim Wenders. Follow us wherever you listen, so you don't miss it. Meanwhile, this episode of the MUBI Podcast was hosted written and edited by me, Rico Galiano. Ciara McEniff is our producer. Stephen Colon mastered it. Music by Yuri Suzuki. Thanks this week to David Harper for taping Wim. The series is executive produced by me along with Jon Barrenechea, Shia Efe Çakarel, Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca. As always to watch the best in cinema, subscribe to MUBI at mubi.com Thanks for listening, I'm going to go grab some tea and a lozenge. You go watch some movies.