Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

I can remember reading "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" back when it came out. I started reading it, in the library at university when I was supposed to be working, and got thrown out at closing time, read it on the last bus home, and finished it that night at about one in the morning. Even at the time I conceded that this was pretty good going for a book which was so emblazoned with protestations of critical acclaim that looked like more than a bit of a wank.

Over the years since 1986 I have read "Perfume" probably three or four times since I find its written descriptions of scent to be quite inspiring. For days afterward I will notice my own sense of smell and walk through life seeking out pleasant odours like sun washed cats and flowers and fresh vegetables. I like the plot of the book too, and like the writing, even in translation very much as well. More than that, the book has ideas and a rather brisk Hobbesian sense of humour that really meshes well with my own world view, a world view moreover, that it undoubtedly helped form. In short, the book was (and is) one of my favourites and it was only when I heard that a film was being made of it that I fully realised how deeply it had staked itself out in my life. "Perfume" is one of those books that I think of more as a friend than as a book. I couldn't say that I was wildly enthused by the idea of a film of it. I have been bitten hard before.

I feel a bit like someone who has just won the lottery when I say that the film is really good. While the character of Jean Baptiste Grenouille is far handsomer than I had imagined and all of Paris a great deal damper than I had seen it, the film is very close to being as a perfect a visual adaptation of the book as I think it is possible to achieve and moreover for reasons that I had completely failed to expect.

But before I get onto that, the acting in "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" is so consistently good that it is very hard to see the famous faces behind the characters, with a special accolade to Dustin Hoffman for his multi-layered rendition of the Baldini. In the book I had always found the character of the master perfumer entering his dotage to be vaguely laughable since so many of the descriptions of him hinge on the powder and the odour of his wigs, and his horrendous overweening vanity but in the film, Hoffman transcends the costume and the setting and makes the character human and above all, almost likeable, which is something that I had never expected. Also well worth mention is Corinna Harfouch as Madame Arnulfi, who though she has very little to do effortlessly takes over the screen in every scene that she appears in. I last saw her as Magda Goebbels in "Downfall" ... a film she very nearly stole outright. I guess I am becoming a fan. Finally, Ben Whishaw turns in a very competent performance as a disturbingly attractive Grenouille easily standing his own against Hoffman and somehow managing to make the sociopathic main character almost likable.

The film as a whole is what is known as "powerful" in that it is so easy to get so swept up into the story that it is easy to forget that you are watching a film. This is doubly confusing to someone who knows the book as well as I do since I found myself feeling as if I could see the future even while the plot unfolded, with occasional flashes of worry that the ending would be changed while the film was still only half over. I'm not used to feeling like some sort of seer during films, but this one managed it, it is an odd feeling and, in fact the feeling was so strong that I am almost inclined to say that not having read the book would be a benefit in a way ... except that the book is so very, very, good that that would completely go against my grain. Do yourself favour and compare both, each with the other, it will do your soul good.

Rating: Very good indeed. A rare pleasure.

Some notes on smell, in words and pictures.
Contains Spoilers.

The book describes smells. For example the book will describe the smell of rock, or dead rat, or of wet wood, or of flowers. The book will describe these smells well, and you will appreciate them in their verbal components, in other words, intellectually. To my way of thinking this is one of the major selling points of the book, it is simply, and endlessly fascinating. Smell is after all by far the most neglected sense.

The film shows smells. It shows maggots under the skin of a dead rat. The smell is communicated, as is the main characters unbiased response to the smell as a pure smell but the physical sight of the wriggling maggots calls up a learnt emotional response and a physical recollection of the "bad" smell.

In the above you can see the different ways that two art forms cause you, the reader or the viewer, to access the same information in your own head.

In one, you go to the information, in this case dead maggoty rat, and examine the components of the aroma in a purely scientific manner. You see say, elements of wood, and of wet fur, and of this, and of that, nothing necessarily that bad on its own, but in their gestalt ... rather foul and hard to cope with. In the film you get the raw memory of the gestalt aroma and its attendant emotional load ... without the same intellectual clarity.

Consider this. In the book Grenouille smells a woman, each part of the woman smells different, each part adds up to the whole. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. In understanding this concept alone there is true human wonderment. In the film, a man sniffs a woman. Judging by the sudden silence among the group of squealing retards up the back of the cinema where I saw "Perfume" ... he may be kinky. Without immediate connection and correct understanding of the visual input comes the possibility achieving of conventionally emotional pre-programmed conclusions. This, of course, would be missing the point. Of course, it is perfectly common to have people completely miss the point of things that they read, but in films it is a lot easier since film itself lacks the concrete specificity of words, substituting the personal in place of the intellectual.

Which "reading" is the correct one? The meaning that you, the reader, extract from the words? Or that which you see in the images? In the case of "Perfume" (the book) and "Perfume" (the film), the difference in delivery of the "same" information makes for some really fascinating things to think about.

(C)opyright Alex Rieneck, 2007.