1Review-Story-Perfume-movie1

PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER
Film Directed by Tom Tykwer

Ben Whishaw in leading role as Grenouille

Distributed in US by DreamWorks Pictures

Duration: 2hrs 25 minutes approx.

Official Site: www.perfumemovie.com

Rating: RESTRICTED-Aberrant behaviour involving nudity, violence, sexuality, and disturbing images

This is a book-based movie. The film is named after the book of same name by Patrick Suskind, a German writer. It reveals the story of a young man who is obsessed with scents and smells right from his birth. His obsession guides him to a series of brutal killing of beautiful young ladies to extract their scents.

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born in a fish market and abandoned by his mother soon after birth in fish and meat waste surrounded by street dogs. His cry alarmed some people in the market and the guilty mother was hanged to death. This was the first death occurred because of Grenouille. He was sent to orphanage to be raised there and other young inmates wanted to kill the baby as to save their space. But the boy survived to make some infamous history. He had a special sense of all smells. It is something which was feeding him in the place of mother’s milk. It was not really the smell, but the inner thing of smell which haunted him. It was something divine to him. It was something born with him. It is the moment when we love Grenouille as he takes the real smell of a decomposed rat. It is not the smell, but the inner thing of every smell which haunts men that he loved and for which he lived and perhaps, died. He was forced to work like a slave with a skin vendor. Once at the time of a festive mood in the town he got a special scent. He wanted to know its origin. He sniffed like a dog and ran after the smell until he found out that it came from a young beautiful street girl selling some fruits. He followed the natural scent/odour of her body. She suddenly realised that someone is following and stopped. She knew that he was not following for fruits. She however vanishes and Grenouille finds her and accidentally caught her when she screamed and released her when he knew that she died as he accidentally suffocated her. That was unintended. But sooner he came back to his motive and stripped her to take all the scent before it fades.

When the story takes a turning point, Giuseppe Baldini, an old perfumer is buried with his good old days of a great perfumer. His shop is located in the middle of a bridge. That time Grenouille meets his shop with a skin coat. The twist in his life occurred when he prepared a perfume which was so special and newest for Baldini. He bought Grenouille from the tanner for huge amount. The tanner was killed sooner by thieves. Now coming back to the perfumer-his business flourished like the old days. It was like the days-gone by are coming back. Baldini found a good student also in Grenouille and taught him the basics of perfume and perfume making. He told him a legacy about perfume that there are harmonies of thirteen scents and only twelve are found out. There arises the desire for thirteenth scent in the mind of Grenouille. The perfumer taught him how to extract scent by distillation. Grenouille was a curious student. He worked overnight and one day the perfumer noticed that his pet cat was distilled by Grenouille as an experiment to capture scent. Eventhough he was sad, the value and curiosity of Grenouille makes him calm sooner. Grenouille once tried to extract the scent of glass and some stained iron and disheartened by the result. Grenouille falls ill and the perfumer felt sad as he could not teach him how to extract the scent of glass. He decided to send Grenouille to city of Grasse to learn newer methods of perfume making and heard by this Grenouille recovers. The film gives its essence by a scene when he takes a bath in natural showers and waterfalls and learns that he has no smell of his own. This is the true point on which the movie relies to reach its end plot. Grenouille lost all his joy when he realises that he has no special smell of his own and thinks that he is of no value in the world without a scent. Now he wanted to preserve that special scent of human forever. It is in Grasse where he murders beautiful women and distilled their bodies to extract scent.

I rate it as a ‘must watch movie’ and for it I am not detailing the rest interesting things happened in Grasse. Rarely we find Grenouille speak something. But the end was something like this. Grenouille was sentenced to death and when he opens the top of his life’s motive which was filled in a small bottle, the whole men who wanted to have him killed most brutally were on their knees before him.

And when Grenouille came to knew that the people became mad of the perfume which is not his scent and he is such a valueless creature almost hated by everyone, returns to his motherland and when unnoticed by bad people who were roaming the streets including whores, he pours the perfume over his head....Now you must really go and watch the film or buy the DVD. Someone may feel semblance with the anti-hero/hero Grenouille. I promise, you will like it.