Sonic Cinema

One of my favorite things in movies is when they show why a piece of music matters to a character. While a great soundtrack can help us figure out who a character is, when we see characters actively engage with music onscreen, that is a special thing for me. There are plenty of great examples of this- Max Cherry discovering The Delfonics in “Jackie Brown”; “As Time Goes By” being a shared song in “Casablanca” and Tom sharing his love of The Smiths in “(500) Days of Summer”. I don’t think another film has resonated with me in this way like Wim Wenders’s “Perfect Days”, however. It’s not surprising that the German director elevates the importance of music in his newest film; what he does that is extraordinary is how we learn a lot about Hirayama (Kôji Yakusho) from his musical choices, and how he decides to listen to them.

There is a lot of casual music listening in “Perfect Days”. One of the things I loved about the film was how it is simply showing Hirayama through the act of living day-to-day, and doing the job that matters to him- being a public toilet cleaner in Japan. He listens to music driving from location to location. We see him choose what his soundtrack will be for the day as he gets started. Will it be The Animals? Patti Smith? Velvet Underground? The Rolling Stones? The music we choose for a day reflects our mood, and I love that bit of authenticity in Wenders’s film. But Hirayama isn’t listening via CD or iPod or Pandora- his albums are on cassette. The medium is as important as the music. Yes, an iPod or streaming app would allow more accessibility outside of the car, or his home, but there’s something about putting in a cassette that felt more tactile than just flipping through an app, or putting a CD in. Would the cassette play? Would you need to flip it over? Would you have to rewind to that song? That Hirayama has chosen not to upgrade his music listening is indicative of how he works- he is comfortable in his routine.

A lot of people have put playlists of the “Perfect Days” soundtrack together on streaming apps. The one I have been listening to is this one on YouTube Music.

One of the most important scenes in the movie, for me, comes when Hirayama is having to drive his coworker, Takashi, and his girlfriend around after Takashi’s moped cannot start. The girlfriend is intrigued by the music Hirayama listens to- and even looks up the Patti Smith song playing, at the moment, for her future listening- but Takashi is more concerned about money. He doesn’t have the money to take his girlfriend out, and he sees value in Hirayama’s cassette collection. They go to a record store, and while Hirayama is looking for new music to add to his collection, Takashi is looking to liquidate it for his own purposes when he finds out how much they are worth. As with his job, Takashi doesn’t understand the personal value of Hirayama’s choice to listen to his music the way he listens to it. Once Hirayama gives him some money, he leaves the film. We hope that, in time, his desire for immediate payoff in life will fade away, and he’ll learn the emotional intelligence in Hirayama’s choices.

Even if a person’s musical choices are not necessarily our musical choices, we can learn a lot about that person through them. My father had a tape he listened to for years that I made for him, with four tracks from Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” and a lot of songs from the ’60s and ’70s. He was an “oldies” station person, and didn’t really get into contemporary music. Even if I didn’t listen to his songs, outside of the Springsteen, as rapturously as he did, reflecting on it, I see now how those songs reflected who he was. My mother was the opposite in terms of her taste- she was someone who very much someone who would catch on with contemporary music, and was someone enamored with individual songs more than albums. Her taste was very much ’80s pop and R&B, with the occasional oldie favorite, but if you listen to her music, you can gleam her personality. In the week-plus since I’ve watched “Perfect Days”, I’ve listened to the songs Wenders chose for Hirayama several times courtesy of the playlist I shared above. Is Hirayama’s musical taste mine? No, but I love listening to it, and I feel like it says so much about his character, and how he’s lived his life. Of course, that’s what a great filmmaker and music supervisor are supposed to do- pick just the right music for the movie to make it successful. But I think what Wenders does here goes further than just picking the right music for the movie; he makes Hirayama feel like a full-fledged human being. That goes beyond just masterful film craft, and into transcendent humanism…which isn’t surprising for the director of “Wings of Desire”.

One of the most important people in my musical education was John Settevendemie. He was an Assistant Scoutmaster in my Boy Scout troop, and when I started to really get into music in high school, beyond the occasional single or album, he was a big part of my discovering new music. We would share recordings of albums, and him recording Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, Led Zeppelin and others for me is how I got into those artists. My musical tastes shifted considerably, and would expand further as I got into classical and film music through band. Now, soundtracks make up the majority of my music listening, but I still get the urge to pop in Springsteen or U2 or Pink Floyd or Guns N’ Roses every once in a while. After all, that was pretty much ground zero for what I listened to, before John Williams, Hans Zimmer and the soundtracks for “Pulp Fiction”, “Almost Famous” and more dominated my listening.

When it came out, I geeked out hard over Rob Gordon’s “Mixtape Rules” in “High Fidelity”. I do think it takes a certain finesse to create a really strong playlist for songs, especially from different artists, but ultimately it boils down to vibes. What do you want to convey in a mix of your favorite music? Why is each song being included? One of the things I’ve done in reaction to “Perfect Days” is create what I might consider my own “personal soundtrack,” in the same manner that Wenders did for Hiyayama. You can check it out on YouTube Music here.

If you listen to my playlist, you’ll notice I don’t really follow Rob’s rules for mixtapes. One of the most honest things he says in the movie when he’s contemplating his own mix for a reporter, and he wonders, “When’s it going to stop?” The truth is, it’s impossible to really reflect the depth of our love of music in just a few songs. There are a multitude of genres, and artists, that have connected with me over the years that are missing in my own “personal soundtrack,” as compiled above, but if you know me, and if you listen to mix, you’ll understand why those songs were included. Some of my favorite artists are represented in Bruce Springsteen, Guns N’ Roses, Pink Floyd and U2. My pop sensibilities carry through in rock ballads “Working Class Man” and “Heaven.” I have favorite songs from Pearl Jam and Bon Jovi that capture both sides of what I respond to in popular genres. Spin-off albums such as the Passengers compilation and Izzy Stradlin’s solo debut had me engaging further with the full breadth of a couple of my favorite artists’ work. And while “Third Stone from the Sun” isn’t my favorite Hendrix track, it- along with Passengers’s “Miss Sarajevo”- represent the experimental side of music that would flourish more as I got into composing and electronic music proper. I could have gone further, of course, but when you listen to this hour or so of music, I think you hear where I’m coming from in terms of picking songs that not only do I love, but which capture the diversity of my own tastes in music, and give you an idea of the person I am…much like what Wim Wenders has done with his soundtrack for “Perfect Days”.

Thanks for listening,

Brian Skutle
www.sonic-cinema.com