Koji Yakusho and Arisa Nakano in Perfect Days (Neon)

What we first become aware of in Wim Wenders’s new film Perfect Days is the careful routine around which Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) has organized his life. Routine might be the wrong word, though he does indeed roll up his mattress every morning, water his plants, brush his teeth, and then listen to cassette tapes on his way to Tokyo proper, where he works as a toilet cleaner. He stops to rest at the same park, sees some of the same people (a strange man hugging a tree, a young woman sitting alone on a park bench), reads—and falls asleep—before it is time to go home. He periodically visits the same restaurant, goes to the shop where he buys film for his Holga camera, and bathes at the same public bath. It might be better to refer to his habits as elements that comprise his world, because he never strays far away from them, and they seem to offer him crucial sustenance. He takes great care of his chosen comforts: His tapes and books are neatly organized and well chosen. His plants are kept in a separate room with different lighting.

The song “House of the Rising Sun” is heard more than once, and the music of Patti Smith and Lou Reed (Guess what song?) are part of his collection. The first book we see him reading is by Faulkner, and later, we discover that Patricia Highsmith is on his shelves. What do these books mean to him? And what is he thinking and feeling when he gazes up at the trees, when he silently observes the strangers who haunt the places he returns to, when he scrubs the toilets, when he drives home, when he develops his photographs? There is, of course, the inevitable classist question: What is a man who seems to be so well educated doing cleaning toilets (a question with its own rebuttal: Who are you to say a toilet cleaner wouldn’t read Faulkner)?

Of course, there are disruptions in his little world, not all of them unwelcome or unexpected. He moves aside for the city dwellers who need to use the toilet. His coworker, Takashi (Tokio Emoto), is unreliable and lazy at best, and ends up asking for favors to impress his girlfriend. (Hirayama reluctantly agrees.) Still, much of the film feels more like a piece of music with recurring visual and auditory motifs than a classic three-act story, all of which steadily builds toward… we’re not sure what. Most arresting is the surreal black-and-white imagery that takes over when he dreams. Sometimes it is soothing, other times almost menacing. Often they involve people from his day. They are shot almost like the Holga pictures he takes.

A real disruption comes from out of absolutely nowhere when his teenage niece, Niko (Arisa Nakano), comes to stay with him. This visit is only for a few days, but it brings Hirayama into contact with his sister (Yumi Aso), and it is here that the elements of his life start to become more intelligible. They suggest a tragic past, one that almost certainly involves family estrangement.

I say “start,” because this is not a film that ends per se. It is Wenders’s achievement to tell a story that slowly reveals itself over time, but never reveals itself fully. The viewer is forced to examine the elements of Hirayama’s life in this new light, and there are no firm and fast answers. “House of the Rising Sun” is a meaningful song to him—but what ruin might he be running from, as the song suggests? Drugs are a possible answer. The careful viewer will notice that he doesn’t drink, and the presence of “Perfect Day,” which some have interpreted to be about heroin (though not by Reed himself), might allude to a past with addiction, yet his love for the song may just as well signal a desire for a different kind of bliss. We wrestle with the available information over and over as the film keeps unfolding.

There are filmmakers who place unwarranted trust in the potency of an actor’s face. Wenders is no such filmmaker, and Yakusho is no such actor. He has an incredible ability to animate stillness and to play actions with mixed emotions that are just barely perceptible—the last scene is a beautiful testament to this ability.

Wim Wenders is a brilliant, hit-or-miss director who has already proven himself multiple times over. Perfect Days is the work of an artist with nothing to prove, with a hand at the wheel so sure you don’t even notice it. Yet I don’t feel like I’ve said enough, but perhaps just enough to convince you to see it.