Suskind's Perfume by Tykwer – a story of a psychopath / jackal?

[CarpeDiem]

I like films and books about XVIII th century France, so finding one more film about this period was a must-see. In the end film was so intense that it left me re-living its scenes for days. It’s Tom Tykwer’s film ‘Perfume – The Story of a Murderer’. I think that film is about a psychopath Grenouille, that one of low life living in a neighborhood garden that fortunately for a humankind, doesn’t have the means to make it to a presidency and rage a nuclear Holocaust on humankind, but ‘is limited’ by his low social status to victimize a small XVIIIth century French countryside city.
Film is based on Patrick Süskind's Perfume and follows his story to a ‘t’. In 'Perfume,' serial killing of beautiful innocent maidens was necessary to create a ‘perfect’ scent of a human.
Seeing Tykwer's film kept me with aftertaste for quite a while. And I’m lost in many words here as I see a definite pathology, but I’m not confident, which one – characteropathy, essential psychopathy or could be a hybrid with several pathological traits (like a jackal)?? For being an essential psychopath he lacks talkativeness, at least. Hope we will come up with some viable hypothesis of which pathology he embodies (if any). I also leave many quotes which hopefully will help in discernment…

The main character, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, is born in a most putrid rotten spot of the city - a food market on Cimetery of the Innocents. His mother tried to let him die among rotten fish bowels because she already had other kids to nurture, but he managed to escape death, his mother was then prosecuted for an attempted murder. His nurse refused to nurture Jean-Battiste as she noticed that he was sucking her life-essence and while he had a somewhat miraculous sense to smell others, he didn’t possess any smell himself, and therefore he must have been a ‘devil’s kid’.

Grenouille's special talent was his ability to memorize multitude of smells and re-produce them. The interesting details I think it was the scent of being human is that what Grenouille didn’t possess himself, but was eager to seize from humans; and, secondly, how details of his birth, and deranged early childhood are portrayed, that may indicate lesions to his brain during birth and / or early childhood. The sense of smell is the most developed in predators thus his extraordinary ability to sense smell might serve like a parallel with predatory nature of psychopath exerts on human society.

This site among read flags, noticed by those who encountered psychopaths which are not usually found in psychopath's 'red flag' documents, states that psychopaths possess an abnormal sense of smell. Psychopaths may not smell things we can or not as well as humans can, displaying a deviating olfactory sense. They are noted in excessive use of colognes / aftershave / perfumes and that feature seems to be more prominently evident in male psychopaths.
Psychologist Dominique Lapierre (UQAM) studied involvement of specific regions of the brain, the prefrontal ventral regions and the frontal dorsolateral cortex, in psychopathy.

The frontal ventral regions play a specific role in the processing of olfactory information and handle integration of sensory information with that coming from the organism’s internal environment. They are connected to the frontal dorsolateral cortex, a link that would be the basis of mediation of internal processes by external perceptions, according to their motivational significance.
When lesioned, the functioning of these regions is disturbed and there appear deficits such as: lack of spontaneity, pathological inertia, impulsiveness, dis-inhibition and alteration of the consciousness of the self. The functions of the prefrontal regions include direction of attention, discrimination of the importance of stimuli, formation of intent, development of a plan of action, execution of the action and analysis of the results obtained. More specifically, the ventral regions are above all responsible for the social and emotional adjustment of the individual, whereas the dorsolateral regions are more centered on regulation and integration of the cognitive functions. When prefrontal lesions occur during childhood, the symptoms seem to demonstrate interference in the development of introspection, social judgment, empathy, abstract reasoning and planning.
The study of ventral lesions in humans demonstrates that these cause attention deficits (high distractibility), perturbation of olfactory identification (anosmia), irritability, disinhibition of the sex drive, lack of consideration for moral and ethical principles, hyperactivity, impulsiveness, lack of judgment with regard to the consequences of behavior, lack of altruism, weak interpersonal relations and a tendency to commit antisocial and violent acts.
The clinical profile of psychopaths is similar to that of individuals with a frontal lesion at the ventral level. In terms of sexuality, the actions of both these groups are similar: promiscuity and impersonal and ill-adjusted sexual acts. A relationship between the two groups has also been noted in terms of the lack of moral concern, the lack of altruism and the lack of judgment about the consequences of acts, despite normal cognitive functions. The two groups are also similar in their tendency toward aggressiveness, irritability, and violent action. The two types of patients also share a distinct profile in terms of vegetative functions. Finally, in both cases we find significant behavioral disinhibition. There are thus many similarities between the psychopath and the individual with ventrofrontal cerebral lesions, similarities that do not show up in individuals with cerebral lesions at the dorsolateral level.
The research hypotheses anticipate[d] that psychopathic criminal subjects will demonstrate lower performance than the control [non-psychopathic] group on frontal ventral tests (more errors on the Visual Discrimination Test, a higher qualitative behavioral disinhibition score on the Labyrinth Test and a lower score on the Olfactory Discrimination Test [to determine the ability of subjects to discriminate odors]) and equivalent performance on other tests.
The hypotheses formulated were all confirmed by the results. Thus, the psychopathic criminals achieved lower scores compared to the non-psychopathic criminals on the frontal ventral tests, and similar results in the other tests. These results are significant: several analyses on data normality, the parity between groups, the validity of measurements and the consumption of drugs during the evaluation, were performed to ensure the value of the data obtained, and variance analyses were also performed to verify the validity of the results.
The results demonstrating the existence of a specifically frontal ventral deficit in psychopaths and the absence of this deficit in non-psychopathic criminals were highly significant. The term deficit does not signify that there is a lesion or a massive dysfunction of the frontal ventral cortex in psychopaths. It would rather be the result of frontal orbital cortical and/or ventromedian under-activation, and other regions may also be implicated in the psychopathy syndrome, among others the circuit known as the frontal-septo-hippocampo, termed behavior inhibition system.

We know today that the psychological mechanism of paranoid phenomena is twofold: one is caused by damage to the brain tissue, the other is functional or behavioral. Within the above-mentioned process of rehabilitation, any brain-tissue lesion causes a certain slackening of accuratre thinking and, as a consequence, of the personality structure. Most typical are those cases caused by an aggression in the diencephalons by various pathological factors, resulting in its permanently decreased tonal ability. And similarly of the tonus of inhibition in the brain cortex. Particularly during sleepless nights, runaway thoughts give rise to a paranoid changed view of human reality as well as to ideas which can be either gently naïve or violently revolutionary. Let us call this kind paranoid characteropath.
In personas free of brain tissue lesions, such phenomena modst frequently occur as a result of being reared by people with paranoid characteropathia, along with psychological terror of their childhood. This makes it difficult for thought and world view to develop normally, and the terror-blocked contents become transformed into permanent, functional, congestive centers.
Frontal characteropathy: Damage to [frontal areas of the cerebral cortex, composed of the phylogenetically youngest nervous tissue] occurred rather frequently: at or near birth, especially for premature infants, and later in life as a result of various causes. […] In the thought process of such people, a short way develops which bypasses the handicapped function, thus leading from associations directly to words, deeds, and decisions which are not subject to any dissuasion. Such individuals interpret their talent for intuiting [psychological] situations and making split-second oversimplified decisions as a sign of their superiority compared to normal people, who need to think for long time, experiencing self-doubt and conflicting motivations. The fate of such creatures does not deserve to be pondered long.
Such ‘Stalinistic chraracters’ traumatize and actively spellbind others, and their influence finds it exceptionally easy to bypass the controls of the common sence. A large proportion of people tend to credit such individuals with special powers, thereby succumbing to their egoistic beliefs. If a parent manifests such a defect, no matter how minimal, all the children in the family evidence anomalies in personality development.

Hare writes that people who have psychological pathologies start demonstrating them from early childhood.

Most psychopaths begin to exhibit serious behavioral problems at an early age. These might include persistent lying, cheating, theft, arson, truancy, substance abuse, vandalism, and/or precocious sexuality. Because many children exhibit some of these behaviors at one time or another—especially children raised in violent neighborhoods or in disrupted or abusive families—it is important to emphasize that the psychopath's history of such behaviors is more extensive and serious than most, even when compared with that of siblings and friends raised in similar settings.

When he killed a girl with attractive glowing hair he discovered something like he IS different from other people.

In spite of their deficiencies in normal psychological and moral knowledge, they [essential psychopaths] develop and then have at their disposal a knowledge of their own, something lacked by people with a natural world view. They learn to recognize each other in a crowd as early as childhood, and they develop an awareness of the existence of other individuals similar to them. They also become conscious of being different from the world of those other people surrounding them. They view us from a certain distance, like a para-specific variety. Natural human reactions – which often fail to elicit interest to normal people because they are considered self-evident – strike the psychopath as strange and, interesting, and even comical. They therefore observe us, deriving conclusions, forming their different world of concepts. They become experts in our weaknesses and sometimes effect heartless experiments. The suffering and injustice they cause inspire no guilt within them, since such reactions from others are simply a result of their being different and apply only to ‘those other’ people they perceive to be not quite conspecific. Neither a normal person nor our natural world view can fully conceive nor properly evaluate the existence of this world of different concepts.

Interesting that Grenouille then meets Marquis who is convinced that ‘life could develop only at a certain distance from the earth, since the earth itself constantly emits a corrupting gas, a so-called fluidum letale, which lames vital energies and sooner or later totally extinguishes them’ so all ‘living creatures’ [humans] have to grow far away from repellant Earth where psychopaths thrive. And like to give a proof to this Grenouille exerted destructive influence upon everybody who came across him; so lives of all those who was contacting him, were transforming in tragedies, or ruined.

Grnouille was cold-bloodedly murdering maidens taking their very life-essence without the slightest spasm of guilt or regret, relating to the world through power he would attain if creates the perfect human scent; but at the same time he was clearly treating other people as objects he needed to ‘utilize’. It’s like by heartless soulful-less murders he attempted to ‘get back’ at the world to gain retribution for his victimized childhood and absence of mother to cuddle and console him.

To the end of film Grenouille transforms in human-scent olfactory addict, a vampire, with no moral inhibitions absolutely cold-bloodedly murdering over a dozen of young virgin maiden, whose corpses he spalms with greasy substance which absorbs all their life-essence and then calmly verses precious milliliters of their human essence into separate small glass vessels. Not possessing any himself, he creates a collection of ‘human essence’ in hope to become loved, admired, to have power over human scent. While he quietly continues to murder young girls capturing their human essence, and has no difficulty at all in looking anyone tranquilly in the eyes; the small French town becomes a stronghold of sheer terror, distrust and suspicion among inhabitants. Girls are being locked in their homes by their families and prohibited from exiting their homes without escort. One person gets executed, as he confessed under torture for crimes he didn’t commit.

Grenouille thrived undetected by town citizenry for quite a while. Through film he appears very calm, cool, determined to reach his ‘high’ goal and very collected. At the same time he was apathetic, detached from any affective relationships, during his apprenticeship in Perfumer’s [Dustin Hofman] home he did not demonstrate any affect to his Teacher. Somewhat shallow and odd, he appeared just a deranged youth - harmless, "foolish", a bit offbeat. If scenes of murders weren’t explicitly indicating on whois the murderer, it would be difficult to suspect him.

we are dealing here not with a complete man at all but with something that suggests a subtly constructed reflex machine which can mimic the human personality perfectly.
This smoothly operating psychic apparatus reproduces consistently not only specimens of good human reasoning but also appropriate simulations of normal human emotion in response to nearly all the varied stimuli of life. So perfect is this reproduction of a whole and normal man that no one who examines him in a clinical setting can point out in scientific or objective terms why, or how, he is not real. And yet we eventually come to know or feel we know that reality, in the sense of full, healthy experiencing of life, is not here. […] the psychopathic personality is a psychosis not technically demonstrable, maximally concealed by an outer surface of intact function and manifested only in behavior.

In the end Grenuille finally is detected, he appeared to face the consequences of his bloody murders with unsurpassed singular fortitude and straightforwardness without a flicker of emotion. He brought perfume of ‘essence of life’ with him, and when he is about to be brought to justice, he spalmed himself with ‘perfect essence of human perfume’ that he created murdering innocent maidens. That smell of perfect human essence proved to be totally disarming for all people present in the square for his public execution. Strangely, crowd which was about to torn the mass-murder into thousand bloody pieces, was spellbound by the reflection of the scent of the most beautiful maidens which now is mirrored from the murderer. Instead of yelling ‘Kill that bloody monster murderer devil-worshipper’ people became hypnotized by his human scent (which he himself didn’t possess and had stolen from humans murdering human essence of young virgins). Crowd hate was transformed into a sexual orgy.

Sociopaths are "outstanding" members of society in two senses: politically, they command attention because of the inordinate amount of crime they commit, and psychologically, they elicit fascination because most of us cannot fathom the cold, detached way they repeatedly harm and manipulate others.

Lobaczewski sums up macro-scale of human vulnerability to psychopathic charms and predation:

Character anomalies developing as a result of brain-tissue damage behave like insidious ponerogenetic factors. As a result of the above-described features, especially the above-mentioned naivete and an inability to comprehend the crux of a matter, their influence easily anchors in human minds, traumatizing our psyches, impoverishing and deforming our thoughts and feelings, and limiting individuals and societes ability to use common sense and to read a psychological or moral situation accurately. This opens the door to the influence of other pathological characters who most frequently carry some inherited psychological deviations; they then push the characteropathic individuals into the shadows and proceed with their ponerogenetic work. […] An improved social system of the future should thus protect individuals and societies by preventing persons with the above deviations, or certain characteristics to be discussed below [inherited deviations], from any societal functions wherein the fate of other people woulod depend upon their behavior.

BUT, while essential psychopath is portrayed as rather talkative, Jean-Battiste is not loquacious, on the contrary, he is shy, abstinent, observant and extremely determined to reach his goal – to create the perfect scent of human. I think of how he had been portrayed in film, he is rather a hybrid of several hereditary and psychological deficiencies, like described by Lobaczewski ‘jackal’ type of psychopath.

[…] so-called ‘jackals’, hired as professional and mercenary killers by various groups, and who so quickly and easily take up arms as means of political struggle? They offer themselves as specialists who perform the duty as accepted; no human feelings interfere with their nefarious plans. They are most certainly not normal people, but none of the deviations described herein fits this picture. As a rule, essential psychopaths are talkative and uncapable of such carefully planned activity.
Perhaps, we should assume this type to be a cross between leser taints of various deviations. […] A jackal could then be imagined as the carrier of achizoidal traits in combination with some other psychopathy, e.g. essential psychopathy or skirtoidism. More frequent instances of such hybrids are a large part of a society’s pool of hereditary pathological ponerogenetic factors.

In Interview with Perfume Director Tom Tykwer

Tom Tykwer with camera on the left, Ben Whishaw [Jean-Battiste Grenouille] in the center

It is, at its core, about a person who is very lonely, who is trying very hard to be somebody, who is trying to find some kind of recognition, and is ready to break all kinds of rules to get that. And that's something that feels very familiar to me, you know, from other heroes of my stories that are all in similar situations. And what they're all looking for, really, in the end, is some sort of redemption through love. And either they get it or they don't – in this case, he ... miscalculates a bit. I love that I could have this very personal relationship, this identification with the character of Grenouille.

In other interview

I love this whole fact about Jean-Baptiste Grenouille being somebody we deeply understand and at the same time, of course, being really scared of. He’s a scary guy who we completely go along with. He opens doors to some dark issues that we obviously know about, that we are all trying to ignore about ourselves partly. It’s a lot of secret desires that this movie is about, and this character is so unique in its conception. […] I’m very grateful that [Ben] brought all of this complexity across. There is so much of the purity and a nightmare at the same time about him. I think he is so innocent, yet at the same time so dangerous. These two notes, these seemingly schizophrenic worlds that are completely easily intertwined. You find him scary and boyish. Sweet and not dangerous, then suddenly dangerous again. I love that.

So, what most likely is Tykwer’s intent in Perfume: Story of a Murderer?

Surely, to evoke in us a pity for a poor figure of Jean-Battiste, compassion and empathy for his loneliness, his crawling for love, etc… Hell!
Tykwer goes futher to present a psychopathic murderer Grenouille… as a Androgene, the perfect human ideal, the lost paradise love embrace of male and female:

One day I was sent to see Hamlet at the Old Vic theater in London and Ben was playing Hamlet. I had this five minute moment where I realized that this really could be [Grenouille]. And then he did this audition and he presented all of these ambivalences almost immediately. There was this tension, and there was this interesting complicated sexual self image. This whole ideal about him being almost [androgynous]. […]I always felt that we needed to find someone who was ambiguous in male-female things, an obvious issue for a man who wants to create the ultimate scent for himself and does through by only taking women, putting [their] scent on him, in order to attract everybody. I think there is a fantastic and fascinating theory behind that. Ben, in his physicality and in his face, there is a fine gender issue about him. But, also there is an animal, something feral about his appearance that really stays with you

Presenting Grenouille as ‘a kind of a challenge to our moral, let’s say, capacity’

Tykwer completely twists psychological reality of a reckless psychopathic murderer holding in terror and sheer panic the whole French city, cold-bloodedly murdering innocent maidens when he presents him as an tempting and appealing ideal, like some enchanted mix of energy, force and Diabolic attractiveness; something humans in his view secretly desire to embody and concomitantly fear

[Film design] was a major, major struggle, to get it not like that. I said okay[…] – to make a film that is not like a bad period drama. The dream that I was having was to get a feeling of a period as if we were in a time machine, as if we'd brought a camera back with us and were just able to shoot it as it was, in a cinema verité style. We're just there.
And we shoot as if it's a modern film, except that of course it is the 18th century. […] The novel was not about the aristocracy, it was not about the kings and queens, it was 18th century, the lower classes, the dirt and the filth and the stink that they had to live among.

If Tim was capable just to turn on TV, he would see everything that

was not about the [humans], it was 21th century, the lower classes, the dirt and the filth and the stink of humanoid psychopaths, in power in the White House, holding nuclear button, in Corporations, in media that humanity had to live among.

There are always those who decide? to be blind deaf and mute about what really matters.

I thought that the whole strategy of the film should be around his [Grenouille's] energy, that we should follow him all the way through, even when he goes into regions where we are kind of reluctant to follow – when he becomes a murderer

Exactly. Humanoid psychopaths display higher than humans levels of energy and and we are so bewildered, so drawn to their energy, their absence of self-doubts, determination, iron grip…

In film character of Grenouille is an apprentice to an accomplished parfumer [Dustin Hofman] who displays the best human qualities – the unconditional love for his daughter, human dignity, honesty, caring for his family and his apprentice and servants. Tykwer’s intent has been to present a topsy-turvy reality of being a human, to present parfumer as a murderer of a ‘young genius’ of a psychopathic Grenouille. Those who will see this film will despise humaneness and unconditional love of Perfumer in favor of young psychopathic murderer Grenouille in the same way they despise old Salieri for he alleged poisoning of the young genius of Mozart.

You have somebody who is extremely flamboyant, who could easily become a hysterical and a not very interesting character. Instead, what we wanted to do is discolor the soul of that being and have him have this real personal struggle with this [specter] of this young genius. I just love this whole Salieri depiction of him and Dustin really hit it beautifully I think.

Cryks rule!

It is a [macabre journey of one man searching for love], but in the end he discovers that what he’s created doesn’t help him achieve that. They love the scent. They don’t love him. Nobody knows him. Nobody sees him. And that’s the phenomenal part of this whole material. Once you think about it, this whole situation has so much to do with what we observe in the present day, as much as I think they have always been around, the whole concept of celebrity and their isolation. Couple that with this mistake we all learn over the years which is an admiration of your appearance isn’t going to give you much satisfaction.

[…] What [Grenouille] really wants is to be loved. He is a nobody who is dying, at least for a moment, to be a somebody. He’s a very simple person like all of us who longs to be recognized. That’s all. There are so many social expectations every day in our lives, all the time. In the morning we wake up and we look into the mirror and we feel not pretty enough, not smart enough, not anything enough like we would want to be. So we put on something; makeup, sexy clothes, sexy hair, all that stuff; and this is our disguise. What you ultimately want is for people to love you for how you feel like you really are. When somebody really looks at you in a loving way you feel like he’s looking, not at the self you are selling him, but the self that you feel like you are than that’s what transcends the banality of human existence which is something that is really worthwhile. What really makes us happy, is to be in a situation where you can just talk and not think about anymore about what we are trying to sell to the person. You’re just talking, just connecting. Doing this on a deeper level. And that is what the movie is about.

Pity those who pity. Love those who kill you. Connect in a loving way with those who torture, kill and savage you and your family, your children, your parents.

Cinematical: The tone of the film was so set by your musical choices – I especially wanted to talk to you about the choice of music for the sequence where Grenouille murders the majority of his victims. Your choice there was to keep the music very light-hearted, not sinister or dark or spooky, which gives that scene a very different feel emotionally from what you would expect. So I wanted to ask you about how you feel that musical choice reflects what is going on inside Grenouille as he is taking his victims.

Tim Tykwer : Oh, very much so. It was to make it clear, especially for that sequence, that he isn't the kind of killer who – he doesn't get any satisfaction out of the killing. He is a collector of beauty. And he doesn't really – the whole moral implications, and problems of course, once you start thinking about it morally, he is completely unaware of. And what he's doing is, he is completely obsessed with and quite intently working on creating an artistic masterpiece. And these are all elements he is collecting, which are all a part of his ... sculpture of maximum beauty. So they are all like pieces of a sculpture.

Cinematical: And as a part of that, it's about making himself feel like a complete person as well, yes? Because he has no scent of his own.

After such Tykwer’s responses I would start questioning somebody else, don’t i?

Tykwer: And so I insist as a director on having my own team. You can't hire me without my posse. I have never had another DP (director of photography) -- most of the people at the center of my crew, the department heads, have been with me for quite a long time already.

Cinematical: Working that way gives you so much more creative control over your films.

TT: But you are able to work that way, only if you insist upon it. Most people are not strong enough to just insist. You have to just insist and then what can they do? I'm not going to make a movie if I can't bring my people. And either they (studios) don't want to let you do that, or they'll let you do it.

"Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it"
as a representation of the olfactory sensations to be experienced by smelling the scent of a human being. Inhaling the ‘perfect’ full-bodied human scent, people were bewildered /spellbound by psychopath who distorted their view of reality and substituted supple aroma of a live rose (human scent) with its perfect plastic copy (psychopath’s absence of scent). And people were breathing deeply false aroma, didn’t see the difference between live essence of rose and its artificial clone.
Glass Flowers

I stand in wonder. What amazing art!
No counterfeit is this, but counterpart
Itself, carved with the infinite detail
That makes the plodding step of patience fail.
From life's authentic prompt-book is this leaf.
And here are flowers, petaled every one
To cup the rain and captivate the sun:
The poignant lilac whose sharp sword of scent
Can make the memory bleed - that sacrament
We call a rose - a thousand other blooms,
Forever mummied in their crystal tombs.
And yet … somehow … as I behold
These mimic plants, they leave the fancy cold;
Then, frigid patterns, sleep inviolate
Within your glassy cells. Unkindly fate
Denied you death and so denied you life
I want my plants to feel the tonic strife
Of all the testing elements; to know
The flagellation of the rain, the snow,
The scathing sun, the shrapnel of the hail;
To bear the hundred lashes of the gale
And all that soul of man or flower needs
For flowering - the rivalry of weeds,
Not clipped or clamped in time's unyielding vise -
Eternal molds of sempiternal ice -
Farewell, stark forms. No more can you beguile,
You wear the sleety artificial smile
That freezes as it falls. My earthly flowers
Can hear the wing-beat of the flying hours
And, blushing for your deep immortal lie,
Are unafraid - nay, eager - proud-to die.
So shall they burgeon with a sweeter breath
Because, like us, they wait the frost of death.

 

[Aeneas]

Thanks for posting a most insightful review. I saw the movie on DVD, which also included a DVD on the making of the movie, which is obviously the same as what you have seen.

The main character definitely displays all the signs of being a psychopath, and it is fascinating that Tykwer idealizes the character in the movie, who has no scent, conscience or emotional color. Does he really think that it is such a great quality?

Your review brought Tykwer into the focus and how he clearly is lacking some psychological understanding. He also made the movies "Run Lola run" and "Memento", if I am not mistaken.

Given me something to think about ;)

Aeneas

 

[NormaRegula]

Excellent commentary of the film, CD.

The main character definitely displays all the signs of being a psychopath, and it is fascinating that Tykwer idealizes the character in the movie, who has no scent, conscience or emotional color. Does he really think that it is such a great quality?

Admiration for psychopaths and psychopathic behavior is rampant in the entertainment industry. (As it is in other industries that are driven by money and power...the EI is just a bit more obvious because the participants are more willing to openly flaunt it.) Well rendered villains have an allure to many film goers. It's that hot bad boy attitude or the pity factor (all they need is love and light!)

Tykwer's interview was creepy...he came off sounding like a person who believes that all a poor psycho needs is love and understanding to become human. Many of us here on this forum know where that leads. (Something about a bucket of vomit...) Don't know if he's being ignorant or has a darker agenda to make his "hero" more appealing to the public via sympathy for the devil. CD's review has my curiosity factor up in that regard. :)

 

[Z...]

Thank you Carpe Diem for the insightful review and thought provoking theories.
I have just seen the Perfume and went to search for this thread as I vaguely remembered someone was writing about it on the forum...

It is clear you gave a lot of thoughts to the whole experience of this thrilling move but I have to say I totally disagree with the basic premise of your review- That Tykwer wants us to like Grenoille.

Well at least this was not my experience of the movie- it is clear from the begining Grenoille is abomination and freak of nature which invokes nothing but disgust. I think the best description of his essence are the feelings that citizens of Grasse experience upon waking from the perfume spell.
Yes, he may have given the character androgine body of the actor he chose for the role but that even more accentuates his perversion for he has also given him crooked body and scalded skin.
There is also a notion that he brings destruction to everyone in charge of him from his mother to all his subsequent masters but not sure if this is part of the plot from the book.

I have never read the book and I cant say whether he was following the book faithfully so it is very difficult to say what is his personal signature in addition to Suskind's plot. But altogether I think Tykwer did a great job as he has created enchanting atmosphere.

I also noticed few inaccuracies in your review - maybe you mixed the book and the movie but this was definitely nowhere to be seen in the movie or at least the version I saw:

His mother tried to let him die among rotten fish bowels because she already had other kids to nurture, but he managed to escape death, his mother was then prosecuted for an attempted murder. His nurse refused to nurture Jean-Battiste as she noticed that he was sucking her life-essence and while he had a somewhat miraculous sense to smell others, he didn’t possess any smell himself, and therefore he must have been a ‘devil’s kid’.

In the movie the narrator says: "It was his mother's fifth birth, she delivered them all under her fish stand and all of them have been still births or semi still births...and by the evening the whole mess would be shoveled away with the fish guts into the river."
This being said and the way it was acted in the movie seems more like she took it for granted she will produce yet another dead infant so she just wanted to get on with it and continue with her work as soon as possible. When the baby turned out to be alive she was in total shock and panic which was misunderstood for her attempt to get rid of the baby. But this may be only me= however the bit about his nurse you must have either imagined or read in the book as it was nowhere to be seen in the movie or mentioned by narrator. The next scene after fish stand is the cart full of babies and our character's arrival to the orphanage.

In film character of Grenouille is an apprentice to an accomplished parfumer [Dustin Hofman] who displays the best human qualities – the unconditional love for his daughter, human dignity, honesty, caring for his family and his apprentice and servants.

I have to ask, which movie version did you see?
In the movie Dustin Hoffman's character doesn't have any family except the female servant (or wife that he treats as servant) who he also sleeps with. He is not a very decent man and probably psychopath in his own right. It seems to me you were talking about the father of Grenoulle's last victim played by Allan Rickman and if this is the case -for me it was the exact opposite- all the time I felt for the old man and his desire to protect his only daughter, I also admired his perceptiveness as he was the only sane person in the Grasse community and able to anticipate the moves of the predator.

Well it is really funny how two persons can see totally different things in the same movie. Or maybe you just wanted to prove your theory so badly that you filled in the blanks with your imagination. It does happen to all of us and very often it happens to different scientist who are too fond of their theories. In any case thank you for this thread as it has given me a lot of food for thought and provided an excellent way to digest freshly seen move.

 

[CarpeDiem]

Absolutely, you are right, this review especially remembering of how it had been written, has a quite high propensity of being intermingled book and film content. I saw the film on Late Night TV sometime in September, when I was on the seaside, it awestruck me completely, and I wrote only it’s name ‘Parfumer’ on the last page of one of narcissism books I was reading at the time. Review is written on November,22, at least 2 month after I had seen it; so it evidently doesn’t have freshness of insight and impressions you have the next morning after watching the film. Often original titles of film are completely redacted for audience in foreign countries; like ‘Somebody likes it hot’ in Russian version is ‘There are only maidens in jazz’; fortunately this film title didn’t change, so I retrieved it quickly, ‘discovered’ that it’s based on Suskind’s novel, read wiki entry with novel plot; film and novel seemed to be if not identical, rather close. There were couple of reviews on film in Italian, but no word, no hint on Grenouille character as a psychopath, or a ‘deviant’ person. And this was the main thing about the film which enthralled me even before the scene when he murdered that prostitute who was refusing to be spalmed with a greasy cream and then scraped for her ‘essence’. The second very strong impression of the film which I can’t shove irrespectively do you agree with it or disagree, was the sensation which didn’t die through the film, that Grenouille was presented not as a ravaging crocodile, but rather ‘strange’ ‘deranged’ youth with somewhat fearsome tastes. Anyway, ‘impression’ is subjective, comes from the total some experiences of a particular individual and isn’t factual. It’s just something one ‘senses’. It would be of benefit to watch the film again and refine what my senses were telling me and whether 'sensing' would be different now; keeping your analysis in close view. And, Thanks, Deckard, for bringing it up! Will try to find the film.

 

[Z...]

Well you are right impressions are very subjective, but no - I didn't see it that way-
first 15 minutes of the movie I felt for him - having such a bad start in life but after he "accidentally" killed the first girl it was very obvious that he is a ruthless predator which shows no remorse, no understanding of what being human is all about and is fixed solely on his obsession. This becomes especially creepy after you realize that no prey can hide from him thanks to his extraordinary sense of smell.

But can we really say he is true psychopath in the sense you are implying? If I am not mistaken you said it yourself somewhere in your review maybe trauma during birth and infancy without human bonding have caused the damage in his brain.

For me true psychopath is clever manipulator which is resilient and will never leave the game as the only thing he cares is to feed. Yes Granuolee shares with psychopaths total lack of empathy, and even more so understanding of human emotions and intimacy but in the same time Granuolee is not very clever, not at all skillful in mimicking human emotions (which is the trade mark of true psychopaths) or manipulation and not so much interested in power or constant feeding as in finding the sense- for me he is more of a nature's freak occurrence on the loose.
Occurrence which is trying to find its place and meaning in this world and when it fails to do so - it destroys itself. On the other hand psychopaths are different species which lives amongst humans, knows its purpose and its main preoccupation is to survive and stay hidden at any cost.

 

[Laura]

I read the book and saw the movie. The book was a lot more nuanced than the movie, but all things considered, the movie wasn't bad.

My impression was that the character was, indeed, a psychopath - but a very special kind, something like "pure psychopathy" stripped of many of the characteristics that many psychopaths acquire in their learning of "if/then" protocols for survival. It was as though the very specific environment was what shaped the way the condition manifested. And then, also, there was the preternatural sense of smell.

I have often speculated that the way the psychopath selects their prey is by smell, even if they are unconscious of this. If it is possible that the psychopath is a sort of atavistic throwback, or a mutation, in respect of their instinctive substratum, having the "emotions" of a reptile, then one can ask: how do reptiles find their prey? By "smelling" them with their tongue. Not sure how crocodiles do it, but I think it is also by some bizarre sense
of smell.

So, basically I saw this character as a "stripped down" version of the psychopath with a special genetic endowment that compensated for other lacking psychopathic abilities. After all, psychopaths are on a spectrum. Possibly the majority of them are "glib and talkative" and use language to manipulate. But that doesn't have to be true of all of them.

 

[Hildegarda]

Thank you CD for a detailed review. I have read the book last year and it was deeply disturbing. I couldn't bring myself to watch a movie, to be honest. You gave a good description of how the subject was approached by the movie makers. The psychopath-justifying machine is working full blast, as usual.

There is also a notion that he brings destruction to everyone in charge of him from his mother to all his subsequent masters but not sure if this is part of the plot from the book.

yes, it's in the book too and quite clear. Also, Deckard's description of the Dustin Hoffman's character is truer to the book, he does indeed take advantage of Grenouille's innate gift for mixing scents. You kinda get an idea that all those people, who were "in charge" of him, got what they deserved.

If it is possible that the psychopath is a sort of atavistic throwback, or a mutation, in respect of their instinctive substratum, having the "emotions" of a reptile, then one can ask: how do reptiles find their prey? By "smelling" them with their tongue. Not sure how crocodiles do it, but I think it is also by some bizarre sense of smell.

[..] Crocodiles can smell food and water from hundreds of metres, possibly kilometres, away and can locate food in the grass through smell alone.

\\\http://en.travelnt.com/library/downloads/FactSheet_Crocodiles.pdf


And I also wanted to add to the idea about lack of imprinting in Grenouille. The encounter of Marquis, the amateur-scientist, and Grenouille, parallels somewhat the case of Itard and Victor of Avignon, the first scientifically studied "feral child". I even thought it could have been a deliberate satire. Marquis had his theories that he wanted to prove on Grenouille, but they don't even begin to touch the latter's mind and heart, there is no communication of any kind, Grenouille remains fully self-enclosed. Marquis's theories are bunk, of course, but it only serves to emphasize, via a sort of reductio ad absurdum, that Grenouille is past the point to be reached; he failed to become truly human very early in his life.