What would a perfect day look like for you?  Watching a sunset by the lake with friends and family?

For Hirayama his perfect days involve cleaning toilets in Tokyo until they’re pristine. The film, nominated for an Academy Award in the Best International Feature category, sounds like a simple suggestion to live in the moment and to take full pleasure in our daily tasks, no matter what they are. Zen and the art of toilet cleaning. Yet it is much more than that. Maybe in seeking a comfortable closure we’re looking for the wrong thing. That’s what Perfect Days is about. We seek meaning in everyday life, not realizing that life every day is the meaning. A deeply moving and poetic reflection on finding beauty in the world around us.

This small, unassuming tale turns into the kind of earthshaking character study that reminds us why we go to the movies in the first place.  Rolling Stone. David Fear

Japanese with English subtitles 2 hours 4 minutes 6:30pm Wednesday May 15