reviews/previews

Perfume: Story of a Murderer

The movie Perfume: Story of a Murderer is based on the book by the same name by the German writer, Patrick Suskind. Kurt Cobain from Nirvana wrote a song based on the book, titled Scentless Apprentice, Steven Spielberg stated that the movie-version was impossible to make. Just when you’d think that the movie adaptation of the incredibly successful book was going to be shelved forever, along comes Tom Tkywer, a director bold enough to try. The end-result of his efforts is nothing short of pure, heart-felt genius.

Set in 18th century Paris, the movie centres round the perfumer Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an incredibly gifted individual blessed with an extremely accurate olfactory sense. Not only can he remember every single type of smell that his nose comes across but can also differentiate the different kinds of scents that make a certain type of scent up. Keeping that in mind, it’s ironic that he is given birth in the most foul-smelling place in Paris, the fish market and that at the age of 13 he’s sold into servitude at a tannery thereby becoming surrounded by putrid scents for most of his growing years.

Another thing that becomes immediately noticeable while watching the movie is that all of those who come in contact with Grenouille and are left in charge of his life end up mysteriously dying in one way or the other after Grenouille leaves them.

In an opportunity that would change his life, he ends up gaining an apprenticeship with a has-been perfumer, Guiussepe Baldini. With his talent, skill and unconventional style of making perfumes, Grenouille ends up turning the perfumer’s fortunes again for the better. In return all that Grenouille asks him is to teach him the art of perfume making; the art of capturing scents.

His quest in attempting to create the perfect perfume leads him to Grasse — an idyllic town whose primary source of income is via perfume-making. Eleven or so mysterious deaths later Grenouille does manage to create the perfume: a perfume so powerful that it has the ability of transforming whoever smells it an illusion of being in paradise. What Grenouille learns in the end, however, is he can make a perfume that has the power of extracting pure love from those who smell it but he, on the other hand, is incapable of any feeling any by himself.

Kudos need to be given to the director for the incredibly beautiful way in which he managed to translate the storyline graphically vivid enough for a viewer to ‘feel’ a sense that otherwise has no graphic connotation. The character seems tailor-made for Ben Whishaw as the scent-driven Grenouille has a hapless romantic air about him of a man resigned to experiencing the limits of his gifted olfactory sense. At the end of it all, a viewer of this movie doesn’t just ‘watch’ the movie, he/she ‘experiences’ it.

First Published:
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June 3, 2007