MovieChat Forums > Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2007) Discussion > How can someone *enjoy* this movie

How can someone enjoy this movie

posted 14 years ago by santaatsea
75 replies | jump to latest

Ok, first of all. I think the movie is brilliantly made, the cinematographics is gorgeous, and evocative (how hard can it be to translate scent to images), and the actors are brilliant, directing is brilliant...

that being said, I would rather have a tooth extraction then see this movie again. It is a horrible story, not in the sense that it's badly made, it's quite geniously made, but it's not possible to enjoy it unless you ARE an actual psychopath.

Any normal person can't empathise with the murderer, how *can* you. How can you not empathise with the murdered women, be revolted at the idea that redheaded virgins are pure and smell nice and should be bottled up, and have their bodies be thrown out like trash after they were "used". Any normal person would be completely revolted, and wish the man caught, and put out of his misery (because he is not in any way reformable).

Except the more you watch, the more women are killed, and their families destroyed, and the city scared into insanity, and finally, one of the victims, of which we are shown enough to start caring for, .... is killed to. The killer wins. :|. Yay, I'm feeling incredibly artisticly pleased now...not.

That being said, I'm not unaccustomed to watching movies where the lead characters are people who you feel no empathy too. An anti-hero can be done very well, I don't require that good wins, and that bad loses, that's stuff for kids or people who don't realise the world isn't such a cosy place. Take fpr example Oz, or Deadwood, virtually no redeemable characters, but because it's a deep story, with many layers, and great character portrayal, you enjoy being faced with their challenges, and exploring their thoughts, even if you don't care for them. Even if someone is a "bad person" they still have to face the same issues as everybody else.

But in Perfume, there's nothing deep about the story. It's all superficial, and indulgent. Pretty lace, and pretty imagery, and the completely egotistical exploring of the world by scent the killer...and that's it. There's no rhyme or reason to what he does. There's no higher goal, or even sliver of humanity left in him. The story is just so....empty. Except the gruesome and again indulgent portrayal of the murders and disposal of the bodies.

THAT BEING SAID.... this went quite further then showing a grim reality as it was. Up until the very end, it was simply a grim realistic portrayal of a killer's mind, and his world. Fascinating, scary, repulsive, but still, interesting....

...and then turns out the killer's insane brain workings are right? What the EFF? How can you paint murder so realistically and brutal, and then give it an ending only an actual killer could warm up to. I mean, for goodness sake, validating what he did changed my disgust from the killer and took me out of the story into just shaking my head and wondering what the writer was thinking. What is the purpose of making it seem like the perfume of distilled dead GIRLS is good enough to change the mind of a grief stricken father into loving the murderer. How sick can you get and for what purpose then to make a story as sick as possible? Why not make the father become sexually attracted to the killer too, and to blow him on the spot, for added shock factor.

And it's so JARRING. 90% of the movie is realistic, and then we're thrown into a world that functions to the beat of a mad man. I don't think so.

I had no intention of watching a killer's wet dream. And this can only be described as such. The same way a moral person would watch a story where the clear implications of a immoral act paints it as something repulsive...this is a SICK story, where a killer's acts are justified by finding some use to his murders.

Phew. Anyways, I'm still disgusted. The movie has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It reminds me of a colleague of mine who gets a kick out of looking at pictures of mangled bodies, and murder scene photos. But at least he doesn't sugarcoat it and call it "enjoyment of art". Can I ask, what exactly do people ENJOY out of the story? Can you LIKE the murderer? Why and how?

[–] viktor_57 14 years ago

The story is an allegory--a fairy tale, if you wish, and horrible things happen in fairy tales quite often, as that is part of what makes them so memorable and enduring.

Perfume looks at the price of pursuing ones art to its extreme. It looks at the personal and moral sacrifices of disregarding all societal conventions for the single-minded pursuit of an ideal that not only can the artist recognize, but that everyone else will be able to as well. What does the artist seek? Perfection? Universal love? And what happens when he attains it?

Jean Baptiste Grenouille lived in a world no one else could appreciate. To him, the smell was the soul of a thing. Once he learned to capture a thing's smell, he could preserve its soul forever. But he himself had no smell, so therefore no soul. The only way he could give himself a smell, a soul, was to borrow another's. But what smell would the world's greatest nose choose for himself? Only the most perfect smell.

These are but the most superficial aspects of the story. There are parallels and references to Christ, the Arabian Nights, gnosis, the Enlightenment and others if you cared to look for them.

[–] santaatsea 14 years ago

Let's be serious. He was not an artist. He was a supreme egotist. He was a user, a consumer. He didn't create anything. He merely took, and enjoyed. He enjoyed women's scents, at the cost of their lives, their dignity, disposing of them after they served their use like trash, or worse. All those perfumes recipes he gave to his master, he only did that to be fed and clothed and kept in the house LONG enough so he could find the trick to preserve the smell of beautiful women. The narrator says so himself, he could have given thousands of recipes, but he had no interest in them. He wanted to preserve a nice, intoxicating smell longer then the object (in this case a human being) was emanating it. For his OWN use. There's nothing artistic about that. And it's an insult to actual artists, and to their trade.

I think people are trying to read so much into the story where there isn't any. Christ? Be serious, Grenouille didn't sacrifice anything. He took lives, to indulge in his fetish, and then when he topped his fetish to the point where no smell could give him a rush so great, he realised there's no purpose to his life. Even at the end, when he is crying because of the first lady he murdered, is he crying out of guilt, that he took a life? No. He's crying because that scent, her scent, is lost to him forever. Pure egotism.

Allegory? I don't see it. For 90% of the movie, the story is realistic. If the movie had stopped when they took him out of the dungeon, people would laud this as a foray into the mind of a murderer, a fascinating look into the the world of 18th century. Allegories pressupose symbolic acts, and people. There was nothing symbolic about anything up until the end, it was completely realistic, down to the mass hysteria of being in a city with a killer loose, and to the logical thinking and profiling of the girl's father.

How is a murderer an allegory of an artist? Not all murderers have such elaborate fetishes of why the murder should take place, but they all do it because it produces pleasure to them. Be it sexual, or more sophisticated, they all disregard human life, to obtain that pleasure, at any cost. Many of them have rituals, many take objects of the body. Some even fashion objects and such that are eerily similar to what Grenouille did - Ed Gein for that matter. Is HE in artist? Does he symbolise one? Imagine a realistic biopic of Ed Gein's life, at the end of which he actually wears his dead people's skin suit, and....people are amazed at how beautiful he is, and they prostrate themselves before him. That's exactly how this movie was.

Anyways, bottom line, a murderer takes, and an artist gives. All Grenoille did, stemmed out of his own personal desires, never taking into account others'. The moment where he releases the scent, even then, he didn't do it out of some higher artistic purpose. He REVELLS in controling the people, into wiping their minds and turning them into slobbering beasts, slaves to their own baser instincts. The very end is even more absurd. Why provoke sexual desire to some people, and gluttony to others. And absurd to assume he did that to do a good deed, yeah right. More like he wanted an out of the world with a bang, since it held nothing he could explore anymore.

[–] littleforest 14 years ago

@ santaatsea
It's peculiar because you've taken quite a lot away from 'Perfume'. Films don't have to be "enjoyable" to be great. & it's clearly made you think/have a reaction.
Perhaps the film has done it's job, no?

[–] earth_faerie_13 14 years ago

I agree. Good movies make you think, and this one obviously made you think. Even if you didn't find it 'enjoyable.'

[–] bubblegum3091 11 years ago

What bull, I despise people who say meaningless things like this. Every movie makes me think, I have this weird, clearly rare, condition where I never stop thinking, you know? For some reason I'm not some vegetable whose brain only comes alive when a so-called "good film" is put in front of me. If a person has many legitimate problems with a film and did not even enjoy watching it then maybe it *isn't* a very good film.

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] kpddukpoki 11 years ago

the only thing good about this movie was how beautiful rachel hurd-wood looked with red hair. Everything else was turd-a-rific!

[–] viktor_57 14 years ago

Grenouille was not an artist because he was an egotist? And artists aren't the supreme egotists, pursuing their own art instead of something that is actually essential to society, like food, clothing or shelter?

How was Grenouille like Christ? Let's see. He gave his victims eternal life by preserving their souls (scent) beyond the limits of the body. By unleashing his master perfume creation he gave the crowd a glimpse of paradise that expressed itself in the unselfconscious display of love. At the end he literal gave his body to the Parisian rabble who devoured him in an act of pure love.

Your notion of allegory demands non-realism? Where do you get that? From Merriam-Webster: allegory - the expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence.

How is a murderer an allegory of an artist? It's obvious from your writings that you feel things can only be compared if they are exactly alike, which defeats the purpose of allegory and metaphor since the whole purpose of such devices is to give new insight to an object by comparison to something unlikely yet apropos.

And Grenouille did give, as noted above. And artists, even by your narrow definition, take all the time. That is how they create art, by taking what is around them and refashioning it into something new.

[–] bubblegum3091 11 years ago

He gave his victims eternal life by preserving their souls (scent) beyond the limits of the body.

No he didn't. Pretty idea but I'm pretty sure they are not alive in a bottle, he hasn't captured their souls, he's scraped off some skin cells and hair follicles and boiled it. So I'm not sure how he gave them eternal life - actually what he did is the exact opposite, this thing called death where they no longer have life at all. So he killed 13 women for what? For some people to have an orgasm they forget and some people to have a meal. I don't see much great sacrifice on his part.

[–] kpddukpoki 11 years ago

"How was Grenouille like Christ? Let's see..."

yikes! umm no. just no.

[–] renata77 10 years ago

How was Grenouille like Christ? Let's see. He gave his victims eternal life by preserving their souls (scent) beyond the limits of the body. By unleashing his master perfume creation he gave the crowd a glimpse of paradise that expressed itself in the unselfconscious display of love. At the end he literal gave his body to the Parisian rabble who devoured him in an act of pure love.

I'm speechless at this intellectualization of revolting actions. Like Christ? Oh, please. Love? Hogwash.

[–] 1btb 14 years ago

It's very clear you just don't get it. Please do us all a big favor and never watch another movie. In the event you do, please stay away from the message boards.

[–] Jakealope 12 years ago

You are being too provincial. It was not meant to be some cheesy black and white morality play like some stupid comic book movie. He also lived in a time of great cruelty and injustices, all legal, and was brutalized from birth by people who beat and enslaved him. He simply had no real ego or sense of right and wrong, so what he did was more out of instinct than anything else.

[–] kjs-2 11 years ago

I could very much empathize with the murderer. That was one of the main reasons for this film to exist. He is never a cold psychopath. He is just totally socially inept from all his trauma growing up. That coupled with the fact he lives in a different world from the rest of us makes it very difficult for him to relate to others in any normal way. The first girl is the most telling and is the event that seals his and his future victims' fates. Every murder is horrible and sad not just for the victim but sad for the murderer as well. None of those encounters had to go that way if only he was shown more softness / tenderness / love growing up. The scene towards the end when the whole crowd demonstrates the softness and love he was never shown is also the moment of his realization of how mistaken he had been and is why he then decides what to do at the end of the film.

[–] kpddukpoki 11 years ago

"none of those encounters had to go that way if only he was shown more softness / tenderness / love growing up"

except this does not excuse him to go around and murder all these girls. Perhaps Ted Bundy wasn't raised in a perfect household. Does that mean we should feel sad and sympathetic for this guy's murders and rapes? Oh give me a break! For crying out loud i know many people who grew up in battered/abused homes and they turned out better. empathize with the murderer? Hah!

[–] Ty_Rants 8 years ago

Not an excuse, an action and reaction.
Different action would produce different reaction, no?

Also, in regards to Ted Bundy, in his final interview before execution, he does admit to being raised in a, more or less, 'perfect household'. And even the judge sentencing him, to a degree, felt sadness and sympathy towards him...

"It is further ordered that on such scheduled date that you will be put to death by a current of electricity, sufficient to cause your immediate death and that current of electricity shall continue to be passed through your body until you are dead.

Take care of yourself, young man. I say that to you sincerely; take care of yourself, please. It is an utter tragedy for this court to see such a total waste of humanity as I’ve experienced in this courtroom.

You’re a bright young man. You would have made a good lawyer and I would have loved to have you practice in front of me, but you went another way, partner. Take care of yourself. I don’t feel any animosity toward you. I want you to know that. Once again, take care of yourself."
— Judge Edward Cowart

Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

Look before you leap.

[–] flickfix 9 years ago

So I guess a good way to show kids love and tenderness is for parents to make love in front of kids?

[–] bubblegum3091 11 years ago

You got it spot on, great post.

[–] poin-dexter 11 years ago

We aren't really supposed to "empathise" with Grenouille, but perhaps we can learn from his mistakes, or the mistakes of the people around him. In no way did the end "validate" his actions, in fact, quite the opposite occurred. Grenouille found the perfect scent and realised that it wasn't what he wanted at all. Just take scent as a metaphor for the "soul" - he tries to preserve the "souls" of the virgin girls, stealing them for himself. All this does is provide him with a method to control other people, devoid of any real feeling or emotion, and only effective while the perfume lasts. It cannot give him what he really wants - a soul of his own.

Let's be serious. He was not an artist. He was a supreme egotist. He was a user, a consumer. He didn't create anything. He merely took, and enjoyed. He enjoyed women's scents, at the cost of their lives, their dignity, disposing of them after they served their use like trash, or worse. All those perfumes recipes he gave to his master, he only did that to be fed and clothed and kept in the house LONG enough so he could find the trick to preserve the smell of beautiful women. The narrator says so himself, he could have given thousands of recipes, but he had no interest in them. He wanted to preserve a nice, intoxicating smell longer then the object (in this case a human being) was emanating it. For his OWN use. There's nothing artistic about that. And it's an insult to actual artists, and to their trade.

To me, art is the pursuit of perfection. Many people devote their lives to perfecting their art, to finding the best way to do things, to experiment and try new things. They devote their lives to it. They care for little else. If you're serious about it, art can encompass your whole existence, you live and breathe it. And a true work of art will never be truly "complete".

Moreover, many artists wouldn't care if you paid them or not - it's part of who they are, and they do it for themselves first and foremost. Perhaps you view that as selfish, but self-motivation is the key to success and it is the constant drive to be better that separates a great artist from a mediocre one. One's sanity has very little to do with it. And the idea that one can attain perfection can only be described as arrogance or egotism - you need a relatively egotistical mind to believe it's something you can achieve.

Grenouille is not a very nice person, to put it lightly, but he is most definitely an artist. And sure, he's extremely egotistical, as he literally lacks the ability to care about anyone else other than himself. But is this caused by nature or nurture, and can we truly "blame" him for not feeling in this way?

I think people are trying to read so much into the story where there isn't any. Christ? Be serious, Grenouille didn't sacrifice anything. He took lives, to indulge in his fetish, and then when he topped his fetish to the point where no smell could give him a rush so great, he realised there's no purpose to his life. Even at the end, when he is crying because of the first lady he murdered, is he crying out of guilt, that he took a life? No. He's crying because that scent, her scent, is lost to him forever. Pure egotism.

Jean-Baptiste is French for "John the Baptist" - he was an apostle who was mistaken for Jesus. You could easily draw parallels between him and Grenouille. I'm sure there are many more parallels if one would care to look for them.

Allegory? I don't see it. For 90% of the movie, the story is realistic. If the movie had stopped when they took him out of the dungeon, people would laud this as a foray into the mind of a murderer, a fascinating look into the the world of 18th century. Allegories pressupose symbolic acts, and people. There was nothing symbolic about anything up until the end, it was completely realistic, down to the mass hysteria of being in a city with a killer loose, and to the logical thinking and profiling of the girl's father.

Wow, this story is 100% an allegory. For reasons I mentioned above, I believe the ending to be everything - it's what makes Grenouille's personal story work. He never feared death, only to see his work incomplete - there were many moments when he was close to death before he was brought back by the idea that there was still much more to accomplish.

IMO, there is little "realism" in the movie/book - sure the setting was realistic enough, but a man with such a great sense of smell is unheard of, and most probably impossible. And to me, the film isn't really about "the mind of a murderer" or "the world of the 18th century" - these are part of it, sure, but it becomes so much more than that when the ending is taken into account.

How is a murderer an allegory of an artist? Not all murderers have such elaborate fetishes of why the murder should take place, but they all do it because it produces pleasure to them. Be it sexual, or more sophisticated, they all disregard human life, to obtain that pleasure, at any cost. Many of them have rituals, many take objects of the body. Some even fashion objects and such that are eerily similar to what Grenouille did - Ed Gein for that matter. Is HE in artist? Does he symbolise one? Imagine a realistic biopic of Ed Gein's life, at the end of which he actually wears his dead people's skin suit, and....people are amazed at how beautiful he is, and they prostrate themselves before him. That's exactly how this movie was.

I'm not sure what goes through your head when you hear the word "artist" - the dictionary definition on my computer is:

noun
a person who produces paintings or drawings as a profession or hobby.
• a person who practices any of the various creative arts, such as a sculptor, novelist, poet, or filmmaker.
• a person skilled at a particular task or occupation : a surgeon who is an artist with the scalpel.
• a performer, such as a singer, actor, or dancer.

It doesn't say anything about morality, or sanity, or incompatibility with murder. Grenouille is a murderer and an artist. The allegory comes from the search for perfection and the danger which is illustrated by the murders that take place.

Anyways, bottom line, a murderer takes, and an artist gives. All Grenoille did, stemmed out of his own personal desires, never taking into account others'. The moment where he releases the scent, even then, he didn't do it out of some higher artistic purpose. He REVELLS in controling the people, into wiping their minds and turning them into slobbering beasts, slaves to their own baser instincts. The very end is even more absurd. Why provoke sexual desire to some people, and gluttony to others. And absurd to assume he did that to do a good deed, yeah right. More like he wanted an out of the world with a bang, since it held nothing he could explore anymore.

The way I see it, Grenouille never "revelled in controlling the people" - he was merely testing his perfume. He neither knew nor cared what anyone else thought or felt about it.

The perfume only provoked extreme love or "lust" - a small amount caused them to start making love to each other, and the whole bottle caused them to totally lose control and devour him entirely. The "good deed" comment was entirely tongue-in-cheek - and surely the fact he doesn't exist anymore is "good" enough, no?

Anyway, this thread is ancient, but I wanted to reply anyway. To cut the long story short, I never felt that Grenouille was painted out to be anything other than repulsive. I don't condone what he does, but I can still enjoy the movie for what it is - an allegory of art and the search for perfection, and the tragedy of never being able to attain it. I'm sure that's not the only thing that can be taken away, however, there are as many layers to the story as there are to the perfumes he created.

I'm Dexter Morgan. I... can't think of anything clever to say.

[–] poetsheaven 14 years ago

That was a very stunning answer. I totally agree with every word you have written, only you have written it better than I thought it.

[–] ZwanMonster 14 years ago

You can't really diss the movie ig you haven't read the *beep* book, you know?

[–] kpddukpoki 11 years ago

Actually you can! Tons of people haven't read the Twilight books but they diss the movie simply because they watched the movie and *drumroll* didn't like the movie! I'm dissing the movie not the book so why do i need to read the (ahem) *beep* book, you know?

[–] saya_otonashi 14 years ago

then...I think I'm a psychopath....I enjoy the story so deeply, the novel as much as the movie, I actually find it fascinating, I live it all over again every time I read the book, I've read it sooo many times, but I can't get enough....
Her death will be a mystery even to me

[–] Spungecake 14 years ago

What a ridicioulus thing to say. You do not have to emphasize with the main and/or antoher character to enjoy a story/movie.

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[signature]inserthere[/signature]

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ScreamQueen17 14 years ago

I really liked this film. The acting, directing, art direction, and story were all 1st rate. Outside the box for sure.

[–] Acorntia 14 years ago

I didn't know quite what to make of this film. It was just a bit weird. I was watching thinking it's not too bad, bit odd but nicely filmed. But then the ending just ruined it for me, I actually burst out in incredulous laughter just thinking WTF?!?!?!

[–] bradjanet 14 years ago

The film makes it quite clear that Grenouille is a not quite human monster, with an inability to feel or receive love, and that it is only when this realization dawns on him, that he destroys himself, fittingly, with the fruits of his own obsession, I would have thought that this was pretty obvious.He is a slave of his senses, (well, in this case, one sense) and, as a result, has no moral sense at all. It is only when some feeling for his victims surfaces, (his hesitation in killing Laura, his memory of the plum-seller) that he repents and submits himself to punishment.

But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.

[–] pwyjiwwbeu 14 years ago

Man you're dumb

[–] redai02-1 14 years ago

I JUST saw this movie today, and I gotta say...I don't quite know what I watched, but like most beautiful things, it left an impression while being disturbing at the same time. What's the name of the book it's adapted after? Methinks a trip to Amazon is in order...

Well where'd ya lose him? It's not like he's a set of car keys...

[–] BSHBen 14 years ago

I agree completely. The filmmakers did a phenomenal job of telling an awful story.

"I am trapped in this body and can't get out" - Radiohead

[–] mcanders-624-446718 14 years ago

According to your logic, no man is able to watch a psychotic movie (not that I find that word suitable for this movie at all) without actually being psychothic himself?

I think you have got some serious problems going on.. You don't actually need to empathise with the main character in order to find the movie intriging and wanting to see it multiple times, though I would say that this is in fact not the case as for this movie. At some point you CAN understand the actions of Jean-Baptiste as he persuits (what he thinks is the meaning with his life) to make the best perfume in the whole world. In order to do this some sacrifices are to be made. Now I would not do this myself being that I am born with a sense of realistic logic that knows that killing a woman is unethical and plain wrong. But when you are able to see things from a perspective, you could easily make some sense of his actions and in some way empathise with him.