Celebrated director Wim Wenders returns with a new, Oscar nominated, film set in Tokyo that he has co-written with Takuma Takasaki. Koji Yakusho stars as Hirayama who works as a toilet cleaner and lives a simple and ordered life.
Much of the film consists of Hirayama going about his very structured days. He speaks very little, but seems to find joy in his repetetive life of going to work, having lunch in the same gardens, seeing the same people, eating in the same restaurant and reading from his great selection of books. Even on the weekend when he doesn’t work he tends to do do the same things, though it is the one day he wears his watch which hints that he may vary his routine.
So, at first, I believed we would learn very little about the inscrutable middle-aged man. But, he is forced to make changes to his day, some small such as giving a lift to his co worker Takashi (Tokio Emito) and Takashi’s girlfriend Aya (Aoi Yamada), or a much larger example when his niece Niko (Arisa Nakono) arrives to stay with him unexpectedly. It is then, that we find out more about Hirayama. It is not done is a grand-standing emotive way, but there are subtle hints of abuse and addiction in his past.
Yakusho is brilliant, revealing a lot from small expressions and Nakono makes a real impression too. This is a beautifully shot, wonderfully paced film that shows how joy can be taken from the simplest things and it is arguably Wenders’ finest achievement.
Rating: 9 out of 10