Simple living is virtous?

Perfect Days (Japanese, 2023)
Director: Wim Wenders

(Please note: It is plural, not singular. Every day is a perfect day, and there are many!)

This is a reminder to recreational cyclists over 60: Just enjoy every opportunity that comes your way. By the twist of fate or alms from karma, you can go out, pedal, and feel the wind whisk by as you zoom downhill. Only some people are gifted with the privilege to do this. There is no need to outdo a fellow cyclist, go all out for a personal record, or invest in a state-of-the-art, spanking-new machine to keep up with the Joneses. Every completed cycling route happens on a perfect day. There will be many perfect days.

This beautifully crafted film gets all my thumbs up. It moves very slowly with apparently no definite direction, but that, in essence, that is the message behind the movie. We should find happiness in the things around us. 

The protagonist, Hirayama, is a creature of routine. He gets up to the rhythmic pace of a street sweeper sweeping the street. From that, it is like clockwork. Folding his mattress neatly, washing up, trimming his moustache, slipping into his overalls, and getting his keys organised, he exits his door. He looks out gleefully at the morning sky. Next is coffee from the vending machine, and gets into his working van. In the truck, he listens to songs that suit his mood on a cassette player! He is a proud, dedicated worker who cleans public toilets. 

Even though he realises that he is viewed with condescension, he knows his job is essential and does it diligently. 

His lunchtime routine is also set. Armed with a packet of drinks and a sandwich, he sits on the same park bench every day, observing people and seeing the ray of light dancing through the shadows of the leaf (Komorebi*). He snaps moments he finds something fascinating on his analogue automatic camera (with physical films!). His mobile phone is also an analogue. He is content without learning to take digital photos or using apps like Spotify. He sneers at them and is pleasantly surprised that his cassette can fetch much money if sold. He is happy having his daily bath at the public bath and eating from the same stall at the food court. Once in a while, he would visit a lady who runs her small restaurant and sometimes sings for her customers.

A few things happen in his mundane life. His niece, his sister's daughter, runs away from her wealthy home for a few days. Hirayama's sister turns up, and we learn about his animosity or disagreement with his ailing father. The lady restaurant, whom Hirayama secretly fancies, is seen caught in a passionate embrace with an unknown man.  

He threads everything in a stride and never fails to catch up by reading classic short stories and essays before he retires for the night, including Shakespeare and Faulkner. 

Our minds like to wander. Probably because of that, a regimental style of life is prescribed to live right. We are told to live simply. Unfortunately, it does not work at a collective level. If everyone maintains an Epicurean form of living, being content with the bare minimum and not venturing beyond his comfort zone or, like Sissyphus, accepting his fate as someone who needs to find happiness within his endless rolling up the boulder and it rolling back, the human race would still be dwelling in caves! 'Now is now' and 'next time is next time', as Hiroyama advocates, give peace of mind to an individual, not protect the community from adversities. 4.5/5.

* Komorebi is a Japanese word that means the play of sunlight through leaves. 

** Hirayama's excellent cassette collection includes Lou Reed, the Kinks, Otis Redding, Velvet Underground, the Rolling Stones, and more

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Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death. Arthur Schopenhauer.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Carpe diem?

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

Director, Actor: Ben Stiller

We are told that routine is good for us. We as human beings are easily swayed by our primal instincts that we need a laid-out plan and to follow a ritual to explore the fullest of our potential. The path paved by people before us gives the best assurance that our purpose of existence will be met. 

Essentially, we are told to lead dull, predictable, mundane lives. Nothing new is bound to come out of this type of arrangement. 

But then, life is as usual, not so straightforward.

“Carpe diem, Horace had said. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will be dead for eternity”. You have one life to experience everything. Miss this, and you have lost it forever. You cannot step into the same river twice, said Heraclitus. 

For that flash-in-the-pan, out-of-the-box idea, one has to be spontaneous. Otherwise, the human race will not have that occasional vertical peaks of scientific and social discoveries that propel them forward in life. 

How often in our lives have we organised outings or holidays at the spur of the moment? In fact, these types of impulsive arrangements end up being more memorable. I remember buying tickets to watch ‘Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark’. Not knowing anything about the plot or its genre and not knowing what to expect, the two-and-a-half hours spent just blew my mind away. 

Perhaps rather than fearing that faring the alternate may derail our well-thought itineraries, one is allowed to stray away occasionally. Sometimes it is not all about the destination but also about the journey. It is not only about scaling Point A to Point B in record time but enjoying the journey and smelling the roses along the way.

This film is supposed to be a remake of a 1947 comedy of the same title. Actually, both movies approached the topic rather differently.

In the Ben Stiller version, Walter, a 42-year-old single introvert employed with LIFE magazine as a negative assets manager, is in a fix. His company is going digital, and he may be terminated. The negative needed for the next issue is missing, and the fellow female employee that he has the hots for seems unattainable. Rather than seizing the moment in front of him, Walter tends to daydream. Daydreaming gives him an outlet for him to channel his frustrations. 

A snow leopard off the mountains in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, pressure mounts to retrieve the missing negative, but the sender has no return address and is always on the move. Walter decides to embark on a rollercoaster ride to locate the sender. What he discovers is a vast world full of adventure that he never knew all this while.

The 1947 version is more of a slapstick comedy of the goody two-shoe son of a domineering mother and his entanglement with a mob. 

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.