It was a strange first 30 minutes of the movie.
The protagonist, a middle-aged Japanese man, wakes up, rubs his eyes, goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, wipes his face, dresses up in his workman clothes, picks up the car key, shuts his door, gets a can of coffee from the pay fridge, gets into his van, plays a cassette of happy sounding western music and goes about his job. He is a toilet cleaner in Tokyo Toilette and he opens the doors and with meticulous and even fond care cleans the rims and the surface of the pot, repeats this in more places, goes to a public bath, washes his body happily, sits on a park bench in the afternoon, takes a picture with his small camera( not phone), goes to a small restaurant, has a meal, goes home, lies down on the mat, switches on the light, takes out a William Faulkner novel from his well-stocked, neatly organized bookshelf, reads a bit, reaches out for his light, switches it off and goes off to sleep.
This sequence takes 10 to 12 minutes. And the second day, the same 10-minute ( or at least felt like 10 minutes) sequence repeats. So it does for another day and a few sidelights do take place. One is with a much younger toilet cleaner who is doing his cleaning job without the least bit of interest and then a brief stay by his niece Kiko who is reluctant to go back to her mother( the protagonist's sister) who is stylishly dressed and comes to pick her up in a fancy car.
Wen Winder is a German maestro and this movie fetched the lead actor Koji Yakusho the Best Actor award at Cannes 2023.
The movie leaves an impact long after you see this. Some messages resonate powerfully. You can be contented with life's very mundane daily routines. Setbacks ( hinted in the movie - the protagonist's tastes in reading and music hark back to a more privileged life earlier) are par for the course. A clear sky, some beautiful music, and dedication to duty are enough for a good life. The movie has very few words exchanged, and the action does not even rise above the routine that also suggests, as a friend put it, you are better off by not giving words to your thoughts. Sometimes words can be a source of misery by the associations they bring.
