The quiet Hirayama gets up at dawn, puts on his work clothes, buys a can of drink from the vending machine, gets into his minivan and goes to town. He cleans public toilets in Tokyo as if they were a sacred place, and his work resembles a ritual. Sometimes Hirayama sits in the park and eats a sandwich, sometimes he patiently helps a frivolous colleague. After work, on the way home, the man stops at the sauna, listens to Patti Smith and Van Morrison in the car, reads William Faulkner and Patricia Highsmith before bed. The next morning he wakes up at dawn and does the same thing again, but Hirayama's face never leaves his blissful smile as he simply enjoys life.
This film by Wim Wenders will disarm even the most hardened cynics, and the director once again proves that he has a unique ability to turn life's prose into poetry. But this is not a poet's film, but a documentarian's film, where something new is discovered in every texture or form. In Cannes, Wenders was awarded the prize of the Ecumenical Jury, and the actor Kôji Yakusho was recognized as the best.