Perfect Day – 6.5

Even a mundane, uneventful life can contain mini-dramas seemed to be one takeaway from Wim Wenders’s portrait of a veteran Tokyo Toilet employee. Then there’s also a reflection of the Japanese ethic: even the humblest job can be performed with diligence, as an art. And maybe the lack of greed and ambition that keeps Japanese society running smoothly, although the younger generation is primed to upset that. Unfortunately, mundane, uneventful and lack of ambition don’t make for an exciting movie, and when each new day arrives, we greet it more with, “Really, this again?” than with excitement. The catalogue of Tokyo’s public toilets, which was Wenders’s original commission, is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the resulting feature film.