"Perfume" is a novel known as "One Hundred Years of Solitude". I haven't read the novel, but the movie was well done. A person (Grenoye), who is born with an extraordinary sensitivity and control of smell, kills girls one after another in order to create the perfume in his heart to use their body fragrance as the formula for the perfume. The time of his arrest was also the time when the perfume was done, and with the indescribable smell of the perfume, he was able to confuse everyone from the spectator to the executioner, and managed to escape. However……
Undoubtedly, the film focuses on creating an olfactory environment. We know that the sense of smell definitely does not belong to the category included in the film as a comprehensive art. It is not a picture that can be shot, not a music can be composed, not a sound effect can be produced... However, the success of the film is It's that it presents this bewildering, highly abstract olfactory world to the audience from beginning to end: the kitchen where Grenouille was born, without the music; the colors on the picture are low-saturated, with piles of fish and mud mixed in. At the same time, the glossy animal viscera, the camera zoomed in infinitely close and switched quickly; the sound effects were fully turned on, the blunt and cool sound of a large piece of meat falling on the cutting board, the sound of a kitchen knife slicing meat, and the intestines— Pulling out his body violently, and the sound of vomiting... There is almost no need to think about it. All this, including little Grenouille's nose twitching fiercely from time to time, reminds the audience's brain to actively mobilize the olfactory nerves to feel this image and sound. A smelly world. Likewise, the scene of the girl's body fragrance is very emotional: Laura's dry bright red hair fluttering in the wind when she passes Grenouille's line of sight for the first time, transparent eyes, scarlet lips, white skin above With fine fluff, the speeding carriage seemed to set off a faint fragrance and drifted across the suburban road. All in all, there is no doubt that close-up can mobilize the sense of smell, because "smell" is usually an action of getting closer, or an action that feels stronger as you get closer. The senses such as olfactory and touch have become ineffective. This work uses various means to render the sense of smell and the impact of smell thoroughly, intensely and precisely.
But a relatively good film work is definitely not enough if it only stays on the fancy shooting. There seems to be mixed reviews about the fragrance's ending, with some finding it brilliant, while others finding it anticlimactic. I quite like it. In the square, while everyone was fascinated by the magical fragrance that cost the lives of thirteen beautiful maidens (perhaps more), naked and silent in love and sexual pleasure, Grenouille stood alone. At the heights, hot tears were shed because of the memory of the girl who sold plums many years ago. Ah, the girl who sold plums... Although many people died because of Grenouille before her, this girl was the first person he killed himself, even though it was only a manslaughter. The girl once gave plums to the beggars on the roadside, and said that she could not eat too many plums; the girl once showed a frightened and gentle smile to Grenouille, who was stalking, her voice was sweet and pleasant; the girl's skin There are small freckles on her, and when she stretched out her hand and put the plums in front of him, her body and the fruit exuded a delicate fragrance... This innocent and pale plum seller is definitely not the woman he has seen or even killed The most beautiful one among them is the only one he can think of at this moment. His perfume, as a costly and crazy gift, is enough to conquer the world, but he cannot even deceive himself temporarily; as the only conqueror and the only loner, he wins all but loses to himself . His power of control has reached the point of supremacy, but he doesn't know whether he can get or even get the most ordinary happiness that a most ordinary person can have. At least when everyone stared at him with intoxicated and passionate eyes and yelled "He's an angel", or when Laura's dad hugged his waist and knelt at his feet and said tearfully "Forgive me my boy" I can't feel this kind of happiness, this kind of love that is rational and true without any delusions. No one hates him now, and no one really loves him. He is a tasteless person, a superfluous person, a person who does not exist... Grenouille leaves this execution ground, which has become very ridiculous, and returns to the place where he was born, the dirtiest and most messy market in Paris . It was a night when the poor in rags gathered around the fire to keep warm and hungry. He stood there, pouring the whole bottle of perfume down his head, and they fell like a stream on his fine clothes. The poor turned their heads slowly at the smell, and the firelight turned their filthy, distressed faces a grotesque orange. They shouted in the same way: He is an angel! ! Then jump up...
"They ate him," is the narrator's explanation. It doesn't matter if you eat it or not. At the end of the film, where Grenouille had been wading, he wobbled over many ruts again, fell on vegetable leaves, people stepped over and over again, and his coat was picked up by begging children. He disappeared because he wanted an ending, an ending that was loved. The funny thing is that he was an angel and they were the hungry; he was worshipped by all, and at the cost of his life he begged his admirers to do something for him, anything, just out of love. Who knows whether the will to power dominates the one who commands or the one who obeys? He was so lonely, there was only one way to die. "They believed they did something out of sheer love." I really felt stabbed from the start, a beautiful and sad lie.
The film did not make any emphasis on the morality of Grenouille's serial killings until the end, so it is said that it has also been questioned by some public opinion. I think it's ridiculous, and by the way, I think of Nabokov's attitude towards "Lolita". Art is never put into political or moral interpretations, art is not a question of moral immorality, but "amorality", they are not opposites or unity, but simply irrelevant, so when he sees Dostoev Works like "Crime and Punishment" by John Skir, which use morality to justify and excuse the "evil" in art from beginning to end, "are not real literature." How should I put it, although this arrogant and somewhat provocative artistic attitude is biased, it definitely has its aesthetic foothold. "Perfume" as a movie is an art, and the fragrance itself in the movie is also the art of Grenouille. Under the double art, it is necessary to push the moral issue up, which is a bit boring.
Although I couldn't help looking at it with harsh glasses because I knew the synonym of "Perfume" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude" in advance, fortunately, it did not live up to expectations. Although the forms of loneliness are completely different, an irresistible loneliness can be found in both works. At the end of the film is another close-up, a large drop of transparent orange-yellow perfume, swaying on the bottle and finally falling, the film ended with a loud and empty dripping sound. It's all over, but it's as if it never started...
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