RECOMMENDED FILM #5
PERFECT DAYS by Wim Wenders
This simplistic drama tells the story of Hirayama, who cleans toilets for a living at Tokyo. Hirayama wakes up with joy everyday, waters his flowers and drives to work while listening to a old cassette. Other than casettes, he cherishes books he reads before going to bed every night and he also cherishes taking photos of a tree that he calls his friend. You might be asking: What makes his days Perfect like in the title than? To find the answer, you must watch. Watch with immense attention to detail and care. Don’t try to understand it Perfect Days; try to live with Perfect Days. Perfect Days is really an all time favorite of mine. It reminds me of the Nazım Hikmet poem ‘On Living’. I recommend reading that poem after watching Perfect Days.
To watch a trailer of it, click here
After you watch it,
To read my review of it, click here
Still from Perfect Days (2023), dir. Wim Wenders
Who is Perfect Days’ and Paris, Texas’ director Wim Wenders?
Born in August 1945, the German director Wim Wenders is, to me, one of the great wanderers of cinema. His films move through cities, deserts, highways and quiet rooms, but what he is really searching for is the human soul in between places. With works like Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire, Alice in the Cities, Lisbon Story and his recent masterpiece Perfect Days, Wenders built a cinema of longing, solitude and fragile hope. His characters are often lost, drifting through landscapes that mirror their inner emptiness, yet his gaze is never cynical — it is gentle, patient, and deeply compassionate. Wenders doesn’t rush life, he listens to it. He allows silence to speak, faces to breathe, time to stretch. His cinema feels less like storytelling and more like quietly sitting next to another human being and understanding them without words. That, to me, is the rarest kind of cinema. His influence can be felt in filmmakers across generations, from Jim Jarmusch to Wong Kar-wai, in the way cinema can become a home for the lonely, the searching, the quietly alive.
RECOMMENDED FILM #6
PARIS, TEXAS by Wim Wenders
This Palme D’or winning wanderer’s tale from 1984 takes us on a leisurely, sun-drenched journey across the American Southwest as it follows Trevor Henderson; a man whom after years of silence and disappearance, emerges from the desert. Through looks, gestures, deserted roads, and extended periods of silence, he gradually reveals who he is, where he has been, and what he has lost over time.
Paris, Texas is a movie about absence—the absence of love, home, and self—rather than events. It talks about fatherhood, loss, memory, loneliness, regret, and the silent hope of reunion. Wenders creates a cinema that feels both enormous and incredibly fragile at the same time by fusing an intimate human ache with the vastness of the American landscape.
This film has no American production companies involved but it’s fully in English. It’s really a foreginer’s comment on the American mythos, like Leone’s films. It speaks with silence and empty landscapes rather than great revelations. It demands patience and rewards you for it.
And the score by Ry Cooder—inspired by Blind Wille Johnson’s immortal melody Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground; which Cooder has described as "the most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music."—is really majestic and striking. One of the best OSTs you’ll ever hear in a film.
To watch a trailer of it, click here