Good Days | Movie Overview

“Only a good day
Drink Sangria within the park
Then later, when it will get darkish
We go house

“Only a good day
Feed animals within the zoo,
Then later, a film too
After which house

“Oh, it is such an ideal day
I am glad I spent it with you
Oh only a good day
You simply hold me hanging on
You simply hold me hanging on”
— “Good Day” by Lou Reed

What would an ideal day be like for you? Would you go on an journey? Would you spend it with a particular particular person? Would you be at work or at house? Would you do one thing new or stuff you at all times do?

That is the query on the coronary heart of Good Days, a drama directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders (Wings of Want) from a script written by Wenders and Takuma Takasaki. The movie competed on the 2023 Cannes Movie Competition the place it gained the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury (the movie that greatest touches the religious dimension of our existence) and the Finest Actor Award for Koji Kakusho’s luminous efficiency. It has been nominated for Finest Worldwide Movie within the 2024 Academy Awards.

Because the world opened up once more after the pandemic, Wenders was invited to Japan to see the Tokyo Bathroom Challenge, wherein Japanese public bathrooms had been redesigned in 17 places with the assistance of 16 creators invited from around the globe. The producers envisioned that Wenders would make a brief movie about every facility. However he noticed one thing else within the challenge – a chance to inform the story of one of many staff, unusually unseen and unacknowledged, who work in public areas.

His focus within the ensuing drama is Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), a cleaner of public bathrooms. His 14 “good days” are crammed with easy routines. Upon awakening, he folds up his mattress and places it away. He brushes his enamel, trims his mustache, shaves, washes his face, and mists his crops. He attire in a jumpsuit with The Tokyo Bathroom on the again. Opening the door from his small condo, he smiles on the sky. Then he will get some espresso from a dispenser. In his equipment-laden van, he performs a cassette music tape.

Throughout his shift at a number of bathrooms, his work is meticulous. He washes down all of the fixtures and makes use of slightly mirror to verify that he has gotten any grime from underneath the bathroom. If somebody is available in, he steps out and patiently waits for them to complete.

At lunchtime, he goes to a park the place he takes an image of the glowing leaves of a favourite tree. Later, we study he has packing containers of those footage, all labeled by 12 months. He finds a small sapling and digs it up so as to add to his plant assortment at house. He acknowledges a homeless man hugging timber.

After work he rides his bike to a bathhouse. After that respite, he goes to a favourite restaurant for dinner. At house he reads earlier than falling asleep.

“Somebody as soon as requested His Holiness the Dalai Lama, ‘If you happen to solely had one phrase to explain the key of happiness, and of dwelling a satisfying and significant life, what would that be?’ With out hesitating the Dalai Lama replied, ‘Routines.’ ”
— Marc Lesser in Much less

Days are separated from different days by a sequence of summary dream pictures, capturing key moments he has simply skilled. (These had been created by Donata Wenders.)

Most days Hirayama has to take care of a younger and irresponsible colleague (Tokio Emoto) who desires him to promote his cassettes so he can have the cash to woo a woman (Aoi Yamada). She is extra all for his tape of Patti Smith’s music than the boy. Someday he visits a shrine. One other day he goes to a second-hand bookstore so as to add to his giant assortment of paperbacks.

“Benefit from the little issues, for sooner or later you might look again and notice they had been the large issues.”
— Robert Brault, American author

Hirayama’s routine adjustments when his niece Niko (Arisa Nakano) reveals up; {the teenager} has run away from house. She goes to work with him and confides a few of her emotions. Driving their bikes over a bridge, he reminds her that “Subsequent time is subsequent time. Now’s now.” She makes the phrases right into a chant.

That chant captures rather a lot about Hirayama. He’s all about being current. Along with his small Buddha-like smile, he acknowledged the whole lot round him – his crops, the sky, the timber, the site visitors, the patrons of the bathrooms, slightly boy who’s misplaced within the park, acquaintances at a restaurant, his books. We study from an end-card on the movie, that when he takes his tree footage, he capturing “Komorebi, the shimmering of sunshine and shadow that’s created by leaves swaying within the wind. It solely exists as soon as, at that second.”

“The best way of the small instructs us to personal our smallness by retaining our eyes on the celebs however our ft on the bottom.”
— Michael Gellert in The Manner of the Small

In different methods as properly, Hirayama is an exemplar of on a regular basis spirituality, particularly within the some ways he focuses on the small and little issues that give life which means. He pays consideration to the main points of his cleansing work, his crops, and his condo. All the things has its place. He appreciates magnificence, particularly within the timber, but in addition within the melodies and lyrics of the music he loves. He’s variety. Discovering slightly boy in one of many bathrooms, he takes him to his mom. On the bathhouse on a sizzling day, he followers an previous man sleeping within the ready room. He clearly loves his niece and, regardless of being a person of few phrases, he enjoys her firm. He nurtures himself with music and books and Niko by listening to her issues. And he performs. He performs tic-tac-toe with an nameless customer to one of many bathrooms. He meets a person with most cancers and so they have interaction in a sport of Shadow Tag.

In comparison with “motion motion pictures” or “relationship trauma” movies, not a lot occurs in “Good Days.” And that’s simply good. In the previous few minutes, Hirayama is driving to his first job of the day. Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” is enjoying from the tape deck. In an performing tour de pressure that invitations your personal participation, the digital camera focuses on his face and the numerous feelings he’s feeling. “It’s a brand new daybreak” . . . sure . . . “It’s a brand new day” . . . sure . . . “It’s a brand new life for me” . . . sure . . . “And I’m feeling good” . . . YES!

Attempt a religious observe with chores.