PERFECT DAYS

Thomas E. Wartenberg focuses on a path to happiness.

- Thomas E. Wartenberg

Hirayama (Kôji Yakusho), the Japanese toilet cleaner protagonist of Wim Wenders' 2023 Academy Award Winning Film Perfect Days, is the anti-Sisyphus.

Sisyphus, you may recall, is the hero of Albert Camus' philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). According to the Ancient Greek myth Camus draws up on, Sisyphus was condemned by Zeus to rolling a huge stone up a hill every day, only to have it roll back down to the bottom of the hill each evening. Annoying, right?

For Camus, Sisyphus's unflagging yet futile attempts to hoist that rock to the summit represents the essence of human life, which is its absurdity. For Camus, life's absurdity is the result of a conflict between our need for meaning and the world's indifference to us. 'Absurdity' signifies our collective inability to find a way to make our lives meaningful.

Having to face a difficult futile task on a daily basis only to see all of your efforts amount to naught might make you depressed, even suicidal. Yet Camus does not draw that obvious conclusion from his account of the absurdity of life. Surprisingly, Camus characterizes Sisyphus as the absurd hero par excellence, and concludes his essay with a startling sentence: “We must imagine Sisyphus happy.” This assertion stems from Camus' view of Sisyphus as scorning the gods and the fate they've assigned him. Sisyphus's contempt results in his triumph over them, for, as Camus says, “there is no fate that can't be surmounted by scorn.” He asks us to imagine the scornful Sisyphus raising his fist in triumph at Zeus as he watches his rock tumble back down the hill, forcing him to resume his thankless task.

Hirayama's days are portrayed in