Director Wim Wenders was in Udine to personally present Koji Yakusho with the Golden Mulberry Lifetime Achievement Award at the 28th Far East Film Festival on Saturday, and he used the opportunity to explain how their collaboration on Perfect Days quietly abandoned the conventions of fiction filmmaking.
Director Wenders, who cast Yakusho as Hirayama, a quiet Tokyo toilet cleaner, at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, told the assembled audience that he would not have made this journey for anyone else. We then traced the turning point that came on the third day of filming.
“He transcended the role,” Wenders said, explaining that what officials showed him in early rehearsals was already beyond what the script had envisioned. The authorities asked the actors if they could go directly to the camera without rehearsing, which is unusual for fiction films, and the authorities agreed.
From that point on, Wenders said he found himself applying documentary discipline to scripted stories. “He was so flat that he didn’t have the courage to take a second shot. Like when you make a documentary, you don’t say to people, ‘You have to come back and take another shot.'” When you make a documentary, those are the rules, and what you take is the truth. ”
“I don’t even know if it’s ever been done in the history of cinema to shoot fiction as if it were a documentary,” Wenders added. “And you allowed me to do that. This award can’t even begin to express what kind of actor you are.”
“Perfect Days” was co-written by Wenders and Takuma Takasaki, who attended the award ceremony. For this film, Yakusho won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
After accepting the award, Mr. Yakusho reflected on his nearly 50 years in the profession. “This is my 48th year as an actor,” he said, thanking his family, friends and the filmmakers and audiences around the world who have shaped his career.
“Meeting director Wim Wenders was a particularly meaningful event for me because it showed me the possibilities of film,” he added, thanking the festival for creating this opportunity.
The Golden Mulberry Award is the highest honor awarded by the Far East Film Festival, held annually in Udine and focusing on popular Asian films. The memorial program accompanying Mr. Yakusho’s award included seven films personally recognized by Mr. Yakusho, and the festival noted that his participation was a highlight in the event’s 28-year history.
Yakusho, 70, has been a defining figure in Japanese film for 40 years, working on crime thrillers, historical epics, and international co-productions. His long-standing collaboration with director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, including The Cure and Doppelgänger, is one of the longest-running actor-director partnerships in contemporary Japanese cinema. He has also appeared in Juzo Itami’s “Tandopo,” Palme d’Or winner Shohei Imamura’s “Eel,” Masayuki Suo’s “Shall We Dance,” and Takashi Miike’s “13 Assassins.”
