Das Parfum

I saw “Das Parfum” last night in a German theater in German (http://www.br-online.de/kultur-szene/film/kino/0608/06484/). It was apparently filmed in Munich. It was pretty disturbing, but also, I thought, predictable and ridiculous. Perhaps it was just the movie and the book was better, and I don’t see how it couldn’t be. It’s about a guy that develops a supernatural sense of smell and lets that ability lead to his “fate.” It seems to show that we all are, at least somewhat, masters of our fate, even though the main character seems to resign himself to what he thinks is his. The photography was good and had wonderful colors and evoked the sensation of smell by all the close ups and such. Towards the end of the movie there was a scene where I didn’t like the photography, but I’ll get to that in the spoiler portion. Don’t read ahead if you don’t want to know about the plot.

**SPOILER ALERT**

He kills a woman that smells “perfect” in the beginning of the movie on accident. Later he figures out a way to capture the essence (odor) of a woman through coating her body and hair with goop and boiling away the goop so he’s left with the essence (essentially a liquid with a concentrated smell). Of course, women won’t just let him do this, so he kills them. He kills an assortment of women to make the ultimate perfume of their essences and gets caught after killing the last component of his perfume: the sister of the “perfect” one he killed in the beginning. Fortunately, by the time he’s caught, he’s already captured her essence and mixed it into his ultimate perfume. Now he’s taken to jail and when they come to pull him out of the cell, he puts some of the perfume on. Everybody is gathered into the town square to witness his execution and he arrives alone in a carriage. He walks to the raised dais where the executioner waits, puts some perfume on himself and the executioner exclaims, “This is an innocent man!” and removes his mask. Then he waves a handkerchief around with the perfume on it and everyone starts making love.

This was the most ridiculous scene of the movie, and I hated it. “Come on,” and “Give. Me. A. Break.” were some comments going through my head. It would have been over the top if it were shown for 30 seconds, but it was shown for probably 2 or 3 minutes. Then he escapes to travel to his birthplace, a fish market, to kill himself by putting the perfume on and letting the poor people mob him to death.

I think he committed suicide to complete his life, having fulfilled his fate of creating the perfect perfume. With the effects of the perfume, he could have done ANYTHING. Instead, he chose to kill himself. Nice. Stupid. What was the point? Just to do what he could do and then die. What did he do? He created the ultimate perfume that a crowd smelled and then could never be duplicated, and took at least 13 lives to create. It’s ghastly. It’s pointless. It’s a waste. The reason it proved to me that we have some control over "fate" is all the choices he made where he could have chosen differently. After killing the first woman (which one could argue, he could have avoided), he could have decided to never kill again, and not put himself into a position where he would be tempted to. He didn't. His next kill happened when the woman wouldn't let him put the goop all over her. He could have put an ad out, "Be a part of my brand new perfume!" or something, but he went the "easy" route and just killed the woman. He also decided to kill himself at the end. He didn't have to. We have to deal with the hand God dealt us, but we don't have to play to make everyone lose, including ourselves. Another point: fulfilling your purpose in life shouldn't include serial killing and doesn't have to end with your suicide.

I didn’t hate it. There were parts that were quite enjoyable. It was pretty intense, too, but it was wasted on this sick story. I had dreams about it at night. Anxiety dreams. I would rather have had nice dreams of the sweet smell of fresh fruit, flowers, freshly cut grass, or normal perfume, in some kind of relaxing situation. Not some murderer killing women and capturing their essence. Ugh.