An interesting point about Perfect Days, this film was originally commissioned by Japan for Wim Wenders to commemorate the Tokyo Toilet art project, he came up with the idea to make a film from this urban culture of Japan - Photo: MUBI
On the evening of April 13, 8 days of "breathing with cinema" for movie lovers and filmmakers at the Ho Chi Minh City International Film Festival (HIFF 2024) ended with the closing ceremony, and prestigious awards also found their owners.
However, the event that really ended a busy week of cinema in Ho Chi Minh City was the premiere of Perfect Days - a film set in Japan directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders.
This is the first time Perfect Days is premiered in Vietnam and will only be premiered for one day within the framework of HIFF 2024.
Perfect Days is also the work that represented Japan at the 2024 Oscars in the Best International Film category and helped veteran actor Kōji Yakusho win the Best Actor award at the 76th Cannes Film Festival.
Joining the audience at the Ho Chi Minh City Theater were Perfect Days ' screenwriter and producer Takuma Takasaki and co-producer Koji Yanai.
The two men shared that they were very happy to introduce Perfect Days to Vietnamese audiences. After nearly a year of release, Perfect Days finally had the opportunity to premiere in Vietnam.
Screenwriter Takuma Takasaki also told the audience that Perfect Days is a film made to resonate with viewers, so he hopes everyone in the audience will relax, focus, and enjoy the film that closes HIFF.
PERFECT DAYS - Official Trailer
Perfect Days and the beauty of small things
The film is a story told in the form of a daily diary of a seemingly ordinary toilet cleaner named Hirayama.
Every morning when he wakes up, he always works hard and enjoys his life to the fullest, even though cleaning the toilet is a bit tiring and few people notice his presence.
Every day of the main character Perfect Days is repetitive but not boring, but perfect and satisfying - Photo: MUBI
The story sounds boring but is told through the emotional lens of the main character Hirayama, he is a man of few words, lives extremely disciplined but that does not mean he is a stoic, ascetic person.
On the contrary, he is always ready to accept the beauty and warmth of everyday life and the people he meets every day.
Although he communicated little, his thoughts and emotions were fully conveyed to the audience through the way he reacted to the situations he encountered during the day and through the songs he listened to on cassette tapes.
The highlight of Mr. Hirayama's day is the interactions with people he encounters on his journey to clean toilets across the city - Photo: MUBI
The main character's musical tastes are songs from the 1960s and 1970s by Velvet Underground, Kinks, Otis Redding, Patti Smith, and especially the movie's song of the same name, Perfect Days (composed by legendary musician Lou Reed), which helps the audience better understand his outlook on life.
I don't know if it was by accident or on purpose from the organizers that the film carried exactly the spirit that the film festival wanted to convey.
Perfect Days is a film about Japan, specifically set in Tokyo, director Wim Wenders chose an extremely small and strange slice of Tokyo's cultural landscape - the public toilet - to tell a story that is both beautiful and full of Zen.
Despite being German, Wim Wenders still made a film that reflects a seemingly uninteresting aspect of Japanese urban culture to turn it into a poetic gift to the country he loves and a tribute to his idol - director Ozu.
Screenwriter Takuma Takasaki (left) and co-producer Koji Yanai - Photo: TO CUONG
This unique feature is indisputably in line with the spirit of HIFF, which celebrates cultural stories told through the lens of cinema, no matter how small that cultural feature is, it still represents the uniqueness of a country.
From there, the film also evokes the desire that cultural stories of Ho Chi Minh City in particular and Vietnam in general will be exploited by domestic and foreign filmmakers.
The image of Vietnam also reached the world through a language that all of humanity understands, the language of cinema.
Sharing the reason for choosing this work to close HIFF 2024, Mr. Anderson Le - head of the film selection committee of HIFF - said: "If the opening film is about majestic music ( Bolero ), the closing film should also be about music but more rustic, from a mixtape.
Films also allow our lives to be simpler, that we can just look at the trees, the sunshine, listen to music and contemplate and that's all that matters."
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