To the folks at aintitcool:
Well, I have mixed feelings about sending in this review of PERFUME - THE STORY OF A MURDERER, but after reading the 5 reviews of the film you have already posted in the past, and finding that no-one has sent in one expressing similar views to mine, I have decided to take the plunge.
I saw the movie at an advance screening on Tuesday evening at the Cineworld Haymarket in London UK. There was a Q & A afterwards with Tom Tykwer and Ben Wishaw, which was mostly wasted by a bloke who kept asking why Tom Tykwer had gone for stereotypically beautiful women and not focused on the scent. Well, that took up about half the Q&A and just showed everyone what the bloke felt was stereotypically beautiful. I hate people who are overly PC. Well, this film is definitely not.
For everyone who doesn’t want any spoilers, stop reading when I say so, because I will go into certain details. In general, though, since I haven’t read the book, I can’t compare it, but the film itself was, simply put, very good. Beyond that it has an amazing performance by Ben Wishaw, and all round good performances by pretty much everyone else. I disagree with the people that think Dustin Hoffman is acting in a different film… I think he fits in perfectly for where the story is at the time, and the same goes for Alan Rickman.
This film is a fairy tale, it is a legend, like the one Hoffman’s character tells Jean-Baptiste, which makes it a film where we are allowed to experience beauty through all the ugliness, especially in the smell of things. And this is where this film will stand out (besides Wishaw’s performance), and what the film will be praised and remembered for. The sense of smell is something that would be thought incredibly difficult to portray on film, but despite not actually smelling anything, the effects a smell can have on your mind and emotions was so well executed, that I frequently felt as if I was smelling blossoms or plums or the scent of a woman. I found myself at times inhaling through my nose as the characters did, but always unintentionally.
The characters are written beautifully, and there wasn’t one character that I felt was unreal. It was shot beautifully by Tykwer’s long-time collaborator Frank Griebe, and the music, with the exception of one spot mentioned in the spoiler-section, seemed perfectly married with the film. The movie is dark, and so the colours play particular importance, and in a way help us guide our way through the mind of Jean-Baptiste.
But this movie isn’t without its flaws. I don’t know how accurately it follows the book, but with the first half or so being absolutely engrossing, towards the end (and the much discussed bizarro ending) it felt a little off. It felt as if the film wasn’t true to itself and the way it was being told. By all means, please go and see it, because the film succeeds on many more levels than it doesn’t, but there was definitely a story-telling choice made at a certain point in the movie which made me not completely love it. After the film ended, I felt like I liked it, but not so obviously that I could just say it; there was a lot to think about, and I think the film has a lot of things that are good to talk about. It did feel as if it hit a few false notes in the second half. In the end, I think the films most interesting to talk about are ones that may fall short but absolutely strive to be the best they can be. I can highly recommend PERFUME, but leave your expectations at the door, and let yourself be swept away. Perhaps you’ll experience it the way I did or perhaps you won’t.
Ok… so from here on come the spoilers.
What I wanted to go into detail here were a few aspects of the movie which I found to be interesting, and in my mind the reason for why it didn’t quite work in the end. The movie starts as a fairytale with John Hurt narrating the film with that amazing voice of his. Jean-Baptiste goes through moments that reflect some classic characters in literature, from Dicken’s orphans, being born on the muddy ground at the fish market, to Jesus Christ with a crucifixion, salvation, and a ‘last supper’-like end to the film.
What I loved about the beginning of the film was how it was told through Jean-Baptiste’s eyes… or nose to be correct. The film has humour and it has an elegance that shines through the gritty portrayal of the times, but most of all, it has an innocence to it, absolutely born out of the character of Jean-Baptiste. He is not a monster, he is a bit of a simpleton, but his desire is to capture the essence of a girl whom he accidentally killed. The desperation to undo what he had done drives him to find a way to preserve the scent of a person, if you will, the soul of a person. The problem is, his beliefs don’t quite coincide with the rest of the world’s, and so in his attempt to create perfection… literally an experience of Heaven, he kills women. Quite a few of them too.
And it’s at that point that the film drifts from being told, not necessarily from Jean-Baptiste’s perspective, but on his level. Shortly after he arrives in Grasse the film becomes more of a thriller and a ‘whodunit’ than the film it started out as. It’s fine for films to change as they progress, but I couldn’t help feeling, as one of my friends that was there put it, that the subtlety that permeated the film until the killing-spree started, was replaced by a need to play the thriller angle, and in a much ‘louder’ way. It’s unfortunate that the usage of perfume as also a metaphor is abandoned… perfume, after all, is about subtle fragrances, not buckets of smells.
When Jean-Baptiste faces his last victim, a mirror of his first victim that is the reason for his quest, we think that maybe she can change him, and help him love without needing to kill, to help him realize that everything is fleeting and that it’s not about possessing something for eternity that’s important, but the filmmakers choose to play the ‘did-he-or-didn’t-he” kill her angle by focusing on the father. True, I was itching to see what would have happened, because while being sympathetic to what he was trying to achieve, I didn’t want the girl to be killed, and for the instant satisfaction and tension that worked fine. But it had a knock-on effect on the … we’ll call it the ‘salvation scene’ towards the end. Suddenly we aren’t really allowed inside the characters head anymore.
What happens is that the films abandons its innocence for a much more cynical approach. Maybe it’s a comment on organized religion or an attempt to portray how preposterous Jesus would have seemed to his contemporaries, but when Jean-Baptiste realises that even while succeeding he has actually been searching for the wrong thing, the music is so swelling and loud it has an effect of irony, and everyone (including the bishop) being swept away by Jean-Baptiste’s ‘message’ just takes you out of the film. Not necessarily because of prudishness, but because it doesn’t feel true to the film. It doesn’t feel like we are allowed inside Jean-Baptiste’s torment, and so when he does offer his body to the poor, and John Hurt’s magnificent voice begins to narrate the end, it doesn’t feel like we understand the character anymore. Intellectually, maybe, but emotionally the film has left us. I would actually be interested to see how the salvation scene would have played without music.
Anyways, like I said in the spoiler-free section, there is so much to talk about with this movie, and that makes it a fascinating film, definitely one to see in cinemas. It also deserves some awards consideration, not in the least the lead performance and special effects, which apparently are plentiful, but that are only obvious in two or three places and never distracting. Of course, no matter what happens during the awards season, it won’t reduce the quality of the film. I hope you all enjoy it… come December it should be interesting to see how everyone reacts to it.
Oh, and if you do comment in the talkback, please leave out the spoilers for those who don’t want to read them. Especially for this movie. Thanks for reading
- H
