The book Perfume has a suffix called "A Killer's Story" when it was made into a movie and translated into Chinese. (It would be even more sensational and unremarkable if it was changed to "a serial killer's story".) Although it is true, it is about a man who murders 26 (13 in the movie) beautiful young women. (It would be better to call it "The Story of a Man and 26 Women"), but in fact, it can be considered as a novel about "growing up".
You see, this is the feeling after 10 years, just like the different feelings of watching Peach Blossom Garden 20 years later. Psychologically shaken by murder, conquest, fragrance, and despair when he was young, all he can feel now is Grenouille's helplessness, his loneliness. Like the narration in the movie "The rest of the perfume is enough for him to conquer the world, for the emperor to come and kiss his feet, or for the pope to think he's a savior, all things except, make him look like a normal person Love and be loved". (The description in the book is more obscure and evocative, "except that he smells himself, so he never knows who he is")
Contrary to most people, I was attracted to "Perfume", It is its "stink". In the second paragraph of the opening paragraph, the author describes the smell with as much detail as possible:
“In the era we speak of, cities were always filled with a stench that is unimaginable to us moderns. The streets reeked of feces, the backyards of houses reeked of urine, the stairwells reeked of decayed wood and rats The kitchen stinks of rotten vegetables and suet; the unventilated room stinks of musty dust, the bedroom stinks of greasy sheets and damp duvets and the pungent sweetness of a chamber pot The stench of sulphur in fireplaces, caustic in tanneries, blood in slaughterhouses. Sour sweat and unwashed clothes. The stench of rancid teeth in their mouths, and the stench of onion juice in their stomachs; if these men were not young, they smelt of aged cheese, kefir, and tumorous disease. Stinks. Rivers and squares and churches stink, under bridges and palaces stinks. Peasants stink like priest soil, craftsmen stink like master's wives, the whole aristocracy stinks, even kings stink Stink, he stinks like a beast, and the queen stinks like an old she-goat, summer and winter."
But the last sentence of the paragraph thus shows the book's philosophical implications beyond third-rate killer stories: " The emergence of life and the performance of its decline are not linked by different smells."
This year, the film of the same name was finally made, and after hesitating, I downloaded the gun version from the Internet to watch. The reason for the hesitation is that I know that it is not good to shoot, not only because of memory and emotional factors, but also "smell" and "scent" are things that are difficult to express in images, not to mention there are so many emotions mixed with reality and magic.
I was surprised that the director actually made "Perfume" a fully realistic film. The only special effect used in the film is when the perfumer Baldini first smelled the "Neapolitan Night" prepared by Grenouille, as if he was in a place where flowers were blooming, with a blonde beauty (with the description in the book) beside him. In comparison, what a vulgar passage, it is written in the book: he saw himself lying in the arms of a woman with black hair, and saw the silhouette of the rose bushes on the window sill, and a night wind was blowing through the window; He heard the scattered birds singing, heard the music from a tavern on the far quay; he heard a whisper close to his ear, he heard "I love you," and found himself straight with happiness vertical)
Well, I admit that due to my obsessive love for the text and the text version, I have a vicious hatred for the movie version, but this movie does have its flaws, and the story must be told in just one and a half hours Pressure, it had to use a person to do the "voice" to explain the ins and outs. The inability of the image to "scent" makes it have to omit a lot of the most classic scenes in the book and focus on the process of "killing". And the director seems to lack magical expression like "Chocolate", making the whole film look like Dickens's misty 19th-century England.
I guess it's hard for anyone to fall in love with this great novel because of this movie, although it is a great novel indeed. This is a great novel in popular style, and its greatness is that it is popular, murder, perfume, Paris, beautiful young women, bizarre fate, power to conquer the world and unexpected ending, more than "The Da Vinci Code" Flow is more popular, but look at it again, and it has another power that points directly to the heart, and that power is even stronger than its seemingly powerful appearance. I still remember when I finished reading this book in high school, I spent about 3 days in a trance, and I even sniffed everything I could get around, desks, chairs, benches, pencil erasers, books. Paper, and the necks of many classmates. So much so that there are still people who recall that I always liked to get behind the neck of a female classmate like a porn fanatic and try to smell it.
As the author puts it, how poor language is compared to the abundance of smells. I'm also looking for a world, not just smells, but worlds that are intertwined with reality but cannot be seen by ordinary people.
Going back to the film and saying that since the smell cannot be represented by the image, the film also uses some methods, but these methods are so conventional that it is almost ridiculous. When Grenouille climbed to the guillotine and took out his world-conquering perfume made from the body scent of girls, a gust of wind passed and the audience below fell back in obsession. It happened that I watched Happy Camp on Saturday. One of Mr. He's tricks was to pretend to perform qigong and make the female audience in the front row lean back and exclaim, so when I saw this scene in the movie, I laughed out loud. Think of Mr. Jin's Princess Xiangxiang, you don't have to describe how beautiful she is, just let the killer say "I'm sorry, I killed the wrong one" in front of her tears, and then kill himself. The film has too little foreshadowing in this regard, and even when the executioner finally puts down the butcher's knife, it makes people feel abrupt.
In terms of actors, the male lead Ben Whishaw has good skills (he was famous for his theatrical performances), but compared with the original characters, he seems so beautiful that he even stood on the guillotine in gorgeous clothes at the end, like a real prince. , This is too far from the prototype. As usual, even if the protagonist is not the Hunchback of the Clock Tower, it should not be so easy to see. As for Alan Rickman and Dustin Hoffman, they are really old-fashioned and radiant. The downside is that Da's classmates are probably too famous, so I guess they added a bit of drama, and it feels a bit overwhelming. The heroine was chosen too well. In addition to being beautiful, she has that kind of innocent, gentle and sexy. I have never seen this woman before. She is described as young and has a great future in the future.
Back to the point, this story is not only about "growing up", but also about "love", a genius and weird hero who loves the heroine in an alternative way (killing her and making perfume) because he doesn't People love (no taste, never entertained). The last sentence of the article, when the people of Paris's old neighborhoods tore Grenouille to shreds and devoured them, "they were especially proud. For the first time they did something out of love".
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