The Dark Tale Of Perfume

After watching Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, you may realize how alert you are to the world of scents around you that you never knew before. Emphasizing the power of smell in Grenouille’s life can be seen as a reason that enters your mind and possibly irritates you every place you go. It makes you try to understand the world you live in through smell.

Perfume, with the setting in 18th-century France, deals with the life story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw), who is an orphan with an extraordinary sense of smell. Living in poverty, Grenouille is obsessed with creating the perfect fragrance–a scent that compels him to murder a series of innocent women to achieve his goals.

At its center, the film Perfume shows the question of obsession and the journey to self-discovery. Grenouille's making of the ultimate scent signifies a search for an understanding of life and its purpose. Through his strange talent of recognizing the scents and imitating them, it becomes both a benefit and a curse as it forces him to kill more people in his experimental attempt to reach his perfection.

Grenouille having the most sensitive sense of smell is what drives the plot of the film. His gift of understanding the smells around him separates him from the rest, and the same goes for his solitude. In an important moment, Grenouille comes to realize the fact that he can smell everybody and everything, but he is scentless.

''The soul of being is their scent.'' (Grenouille)

This finding is a representation that he just passed away, and he doesn’t matter. In a world where scent is the very power and essence, Grenouille starts to see the absence of his smell as a void of identity. The realization hit that he is non-existent without a scent, an invisible figure. 

In the last scene of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, when Grenouille is about to be tortured and executed for his murders, he uses a perfume that makes everyone around him believe he is innocent. Is it possible to create a "smell of innocence"? As I think about it, I find myself wondering what innocence would smell like—or if it even has a smell at all.

But then, I consider how music can suddenly change our emotions, altering our mood in an instant. Maybe the same could be true for a perfume. Could there be a scent so powerful that it makes people perceive you as innocent? There is a potential for scent to influence emotions and perceptions, much like how music can manipulate our feelings.

Knowing that the movie is an adaptation of a book is very interesting. I am excited to read the book to see how the author, Patrick Süskind, describes the scents in a vivid way to the reader. The film offers a different take on humanity from the angle of obsession, identity, and sensory perception. I hope you enjoy the film as much as I did.

References:

Tykwer, T. (Director). (2006). Perfume: The Story of a Murderer [Film]. Constantin Film.