MovieChat Forums > Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2007) Discussion > outlandish ending...

outlandish ending...

posted 11 years ago by statuskuo2590
22 replies | jump to latest

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but like many of you, I felt the ending was too ridiculous, almost laughable, and just plain upsetting.

I appreciate all of the comments defending the ending - I read them all - but if you were enjoying the film and fully engrossed in it only to be yanked out of it by a ridiculous ending, then you can safely and unabashedly and even insolently proclaim that it was a good movie that was ruined by the last few scenes. in particular, the mass orgy and vagrant cannibalism.

How I expected it to end, and how I hoped it would end, would be to keep the orgy/angel scene intact, but for it all to be in Grenouille's elaborate daydream. I would believe that if everyone had their olfactory senses as keen as Grenouille's (i.e. the ability to smell a rag from 100 feet away, and the ability to appreciate it as the finest perfume ever made), then that would induce the mass hysteria/ love fest that ensued. Grenouille would then snap out of it, perhaps by the snapping of his own bones as the executioner delivered 13 blows to each of his joints - one for each victim. His death would become tragic, and almost lamentable - the death of a misunderstood character.

And we wouldn't have to introduce awkward plot devices, like how they all "forgot" what just happened and continued looking for suspects, and he wouldn't have to be devoured by homeless people.

Perhaps then, we could appreciate what he did without being pulled out of the moment by the incredibly outlandish and somewhat dissatisfying ending.

plus... he didn't really have to kill his victims, did he (if they were acquiescent, that is)? Nothing about murdering them enhances the fragrance, does it?

[–] lual 11 years ago

I am really amazed about how fiercely people hate the ending. I would be able to understand if people did not like the execution of these scenes, but people usually just criticise the story and the fact that these scenes are in the movie at all.

I think the ending makes perfect sense and what happens when the perfume is applied is actually the logical conclusion to how it has been set up: The scent of a beautiful virginal girl is not noticable to people, but it dictates their behavior and makes them go wild for it, adoring and worshipping the beauty and invoking desire and lust. So when this scent it condensed into a perfume, the effect becomes multiplied to the extreme. Hence the orgy.

While I like the movie a lot I think the mistake the producer Bernd Eichinger made was the same one he made when he produced "The name of the Rose" 30 years ago: He took a post-modern novel and only made a literal translation to film. The narrator is the only bit in the movie that is preserved from the book which indicates that the entire story is a parody or satire on literary themes, by using a subtly irony, but he is only used occasionally.

While I think the movie works well the way it is, it definitely has a lot of problems as an adaptation. There are reasons why the book has been called unfilmable, and it is not just the visualisation of smell, but because of its post-modern nature and its combination of a story with many different levels of commentary. Tykwer and Eichinger made it clear that they are mainly interested in the story-aspect of the novel by leaving out the one elongated scene that clearly demonstrates the ironic nature of the book: A meeting of Grenouille with a Marquis who is obsessed with science and philosophy and who goes to outlandish extremes with his experiments. I guess they had thought that this meeting, which is a whole section in the novel, would have taken viewers out of the flow of the story because of its apparent exaggeration, whereas I would say that this is precisely the point of this scene.

Anyway, a movie has to be able to stand on its own feet and I do think with a bit of thinking (and before I noticed that so many people did not get it I would have said "common sense") the viewer can make it out easily as well. The whole thing about the scent of virgins is just a parody on how bauty and virginity are taken to a ridiculous extreme in art, especially in literature of the 18th and 19th century, but also still today. The concept of a beautiful and innocent "muse" or the concept of the object of affection that through its beauty and innocence drives the protagonist is just laughable if you really think about it. The protagonists of many stories appear as if they have been robbed of their free will just because they have this girl or woman who inspires them.

This is what Süßkind deconstructs in his novel and makes fun of. The very idea that a young and innocent girl could be in any way devine just because of her youth and innocence, that they just smell differently just because they have not had sex with a man yet, that they are some kind of ethereal beings just because of this. Süßkind just takes this idea and satirises it in the novel.

As I said, I think that this can be found in the movie as well, if the viewer just steps back and thinks for a few seconds why the scent of the girls would be special and in what way that would make sense (or no sense), but I admit that the element of satire is stronger in the book, because the movie appears too much of an adaptation just in the sense of story.

Nevertheless, at a time where you have movies about giant robots fighting each other or aliens invading the earth or people developing superhuman strenghts after taking potions or coming into contact with some kind of substance, I wonder how one can take the idea of a perfume that drives people wild as outlandish and unrealistic. I am really baffled about the reaction of many (mostly American) people to the scene and somehow I wonder if it is in the end just because there is a lot of nudity in it. I would have filmed the scene differently. Tykwer made the decision, as he himself said, to turn the orgy into a hugfest instead of a visceral orgy. I think it would have worked better if the scene would have been just carnal, but maybe that would have turned off some Americans even more.

Oh, and about the people "forgetting" about the incident: Here you actually have and element of irony in the narration. Of course the people did not forget about what happened. They just ignored it in shame to appear like it never happened. They never talked about it to each other and never showed a sign of rememberance towards the others. At first they had to find someone they could blame the whole thing on and bring him to "justice" and after this sacrfice they could safely "forget" it. And since there is no written record of it, it in the chronicles of Grasse, it has obviously worked perfectly. :-) This is just a comment on how people behave when they do not want to be confronted with their own feeling of guilt.

I know your comment has been on this site for more than a year. I hope I could still enlighten you a bit.

[–] NotASpeckOfCereal 11 years ago

Thanks lual, that explains the orgy perfectly. But I wonder if the OP wasn't meaning the post-orgy scene when he returns to the place of his birth, dumps the remains of the perfume on his head and is then consumed by the party in the street.

I've been thinking about that all day, having watched this film last night for the first time. When he left the podium at the orgy, shedding tears, he had come to some realization that in his obsessive quest for perfect scent, he never sought out his own release from innocence. Let me know if that jibes with the book.

Then at last, it's time to end it all, end him, so he takes this final act and that's what I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around. I'm beginning to think that it may have been a metaphorical notion.

Be sure to proof your posts to see if you any words out

[–] lual 11 years ago

Hm, I actually took it that he referred to the orgy scene especially, since he mentioned that it should all have been a dream.

Anyway, the ending...
In the novel, it is made a lot more clear than in the movie that besides being able to recognise any smell, Grenouille has another strange feature, which is that he himself does not produce any smell at all, which is what makes people either not recognize him or find him creepy (without noticing, why). In the aforementioned scene with the Marquis, Grenouille finds out that he can recreate normal human body odor by producing a perfume out of pretty ugly stuff, for example cat feces and vinegar (another ironic hit at the supposed special smell of virgins), which he can use to make people notice him. This way he finds out that human smell can have power and he essentially wants to create the perfume to rule the world (it is a bit more complicated than that, also involving his own passion for the scent, but I will leave it at that).

In the movie, Grenouille's desire is essentially that he wants to be loved, whereas in the novel, which I have read many years ago, so I might be getting it wrong, he sees the creation of the perfume more of an experiment that might gain him certain powers, among them gaining recognition, power over others AND being loved.

In the novel, by the end Grenouille finds out mainly that he has always been a loner and does not and never will fit in with society and therefore commits suicide in the same way as in the movie (again, Tykwer went for a slightly romanticized depiction of the events rather than focussing on the carnal lust for flesh). His motives in the movie, again, are that he wants to be loved (albeit it seems that he predicts what will happen if he pours the perfume over him).

I think that, even though his motivations for creating the perfume are slightly different and even though the movie presents the ending slightly less gory, the explanation concerning the meaning of the perfume is still pretty much identical, just more explained in the novel.

It is still the ironic commentary on what we culturally think about the pure and angelic girl and what kind of power is ascribed to it in art. This infatuation is usually covered up with more innocent motives such as "fascination", "desire to protect", "desire to posess", "sense of beauty" etc, when it is actually nothing but carnal lust. Süskind satirises this by amping up the effect. The peasants in the final scene develop such a lust for Grenouille that they want to have his flesh and to own it in the most physical sense imaginable, which is by consuming him. Simultaneously, he also shows what a passive character this type of innocent girl usually is, because it is just an object of affection without ever having to do anything.

At least this is the way I read it.

On a side note, in his nonsense novel "A wild ride through the night", German author Walter Moers put a similar, much more bland spin on the trope of the beautiful virgin that becomes the object of desire for the protagonist. At some point in the story, the protagonist comes across an island where naked virgins are seemingly terrorized by dragons who kidnap and threaten them. The protagonist is just a child, but he still becomes affected by these sensual and angelic creatures that are the virgins. In the end of the segment, though, the protagonist finds out that it is the virgins who keep the dragons as cattle and who torture and slaughter them so that they can produce sun-lotion in order to be able to sunbathe naked, which is what they love to do, with them being virgins and all. Also, they are quite business-minded and speak rather frankly, thus destroying any perception of innocence one might have had about the characters before. I have to say I really enjoy this twist a lot. :-)

[–] NotASpeckOfCereal 11 years ago

Coolio, thanks.

Be sure to proof your posts to see if you any words out

[–] lual 11 years ago

You're welcome!

How did you like the movie and what did you think about the ending?

[–] NotASpeckOfCereal 11 years ago

I loved it and gave it an 8/10. Sometimes 8s go to 9 on second viewing--we'll see.

As I said in another thread, Whishaw was really fantastic here. I'm really starting to be a fan of his work having seen this and Cloud Atlas, and he's greatly improved the Q character in the Bond universe (finally). I'm curious to see what his character treatment does for Gilliam's upcoming The Zero Theorem.

I'm also glad to see Rickman in such a great role to prove to the world that he's much more capable that the roles he had in the more mainstream of Galaxy Quest and Die Hard.

Back to Perfume: cast and crew really did a great job of getting us to almost have sympathy for the monster that is Grenouille.

I have a friend with kids that likes to say "they are who they are when they are born and there's nothing you can do to change that". This film goes a long way to show how circumstance can so bend someones behavior that they will fall outside of societal norm. This proves him wrong, in my opinion.

We have a lot of monsters walking the streets today, and we have a lot of so-called normal people that are still confused about a great many things because how they were brought into and treated by the world.

Add to that Grenouille's great olfactory sense, he was able to do extraordinary things, but in doing so, he almost unknowingly stepped outside the bounds of morality.

Be sure to proof your posts to see if you any words out

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[–] Cine-Freak 10 years ago

Awesome comment, thanks for that (and the following one)!
Just watched the movie (i know the book) and loved it but you showed me some things i hadnt noticed!

[–] lual 10 years ago

Thank you very much for the feedback. I'm really happy that you were able to take something out of it, even though it was written rather hastily and is slightly repetetive. :-)

[–] flickfix 9 years ago

Thanks for the insight. That gives me an idea. I'm going to create a scent of alien robot cars and mixed with a scent of explosions. Modern people will go nuts!

[–] themanwithnoshame2016 8 years ago

"but it dictates their behavior and makes them go wild for it"

Straight women too?

"They never talked about it to each other and never showed a sign of rememberance towards the others."

Convenient. But what about Laura's father? Why would he behave the same way?

[–] lual 8 years ago

It has been years since I wrote those posts so please bear in mind that the last time I read the book or watched the movie has now been even longer ago. If I am being too vague here, this may be the reason.

You are thinking is too logical and too modern about this matter. I am not saying this to criticize you. In fact, by pointing out these supposed flaws you are pointing out the irony of what Süskind is getting at even more.

The point is that the whole thing is a symbol. Yes, Richis is fascinated by the perfume as well and it does not matter if the scent of his daughter is in it or not, it is just about the power of female virginity and the supposed magic about young girls that drive protagonists.

The fact that heterosexual women go mad after smelling it is just to underline that this is an ideal that drives the entire society. Of course, in these old stories, you rarely get women who are in lust with young girls, but it is an ideal that women in these stories or societies strived to be and that therefore drove them as well. Süskind is exaggerating it by making this desire basically sexual as well.

Süskind deliberately wrote his story in the tone of the story from the times it is set, thereby also satirizing the style. In stories from these times you would never find a discussion of gender or sex. For the most part, unless you were Marquis de Sade, this would simply not have been proper and would have alerted the censors, but also concepts of homosexuality as today simply did not exist.

However, you will also find, if you read old books, that the described perfect virgins that plague and torment the protagonist, are usually admired and beloved by everyone who know them, the women as well. Süskind simply uses this, as I wrote above, as a symbol and satirizes it by equates this supposedly multi-facetted fascination simply with lust and desire.

[–] bart-229 11 years ago

The ending was straight out of the novel. Also, had you read the novel you would realize that the way he got his victims' scent did indeed entail their death.

[–] MissTexasMcCoy 11 years ago

plus... he didn't really have to kill his victims, did he (if they were acquiescent, that is)? Nothing about murdering them enhances the fragrance, does it?

The way I have come to understand it is that he did not intend to kill the prostitute at first. He only wanted to try to collect her scent. But she started getting afraid of what he was doing because it was so strange. At one point he told her to relax or she would "ruin it". By this I think that he meant her becoming scared would change her body chemistry, and in turn change her scent so it would not be as appealing as if she were relaxed & unafraid. Hence he decided that killing her was the only way to collect her scent the way he wanted to, and killing the victims abruptly without scaring them first would allow him to collect their scent without ruining it with the scent of fear.

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"I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way"
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[–] Lothar_Quint 10 years ago

The OP is correct.

[–] nbroyles 10 years ago

i only watched the movie because i read the book ages ago and really loved it. i wasn't hung up on him murdering virgins or the end orgy/cannibal scene...i was engrossed in the story in general. the way he was born. the way he was raised. his superior olfactory senses. the way he could recreate perfumes, and even make them superior to the ones he was copying. his lack of social skills. his inability to "fit in". his intelligence. overall, i found the story uniquely fascinating and entirely interesting. the moral issues never got in the way of the storytelling for me. i was prepared to hate the movie but think they did a decent job of recreating it for film.

[–] gilsonbicudo-725-977255 9 years ago

I felt the ending in the book awkward too. It was as if the author hurried to finish it after had rendered an incredible plot. The movie simply follows suit.

[–] TommySClark 9 years ago

To add to the excellent explanation by Lual, I think your interpretation can be countered by the dialogue in the scene where Grenouille learns from Baldini how to make the perfect perfume:

Baldini: Legend has it that an amphora was once found in a Pharaoh's tomb, and when it was opened, a perfume was released, after all those thousands of years, a perfume of such subtle beauty, and yet such power, that for one single moment every person on earth believed they were in paradise. 12 essences could be identified, but the 13th, the vital one, could never be determined.
Grenouille: Why not?
Baldini: Why not? What do you mean why not?
Because it's a legend, numbskull!
Grenouille: What's a legend?
Baldini: Never mind.

[–] elkriverrancher 9 years ago

Outlandish is right. I just watched this film ... and aside from the all too true, but yukky, grime of the 1770's Parisian life, I didn't absolutely hate the film until the absurd ending. For me, the film would have worked as an obsessed murderous madman's dream - it did not work on any other level. It might have been fun filming ... if it were not for all the grimy faces and fingers and teeth and heaven knows what else. On the bright side, at least Hoffman and Rickman kept their clothes on (but honestly - the scene on the scaffold, when Richis approaches Grenouille? I thought, considering the way the author/screenplay was going, there was going to be a sexual encounter, a la the orgy going on around them, between Richis and Grenouille. Which would not have been pretty ...