But today I'm going to talk about the movie seriously: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. This is indeed a work of genius, and it is indeed worthy of careful aftertaste and chewing, and I sincerely recommend it to everyone here.
I'm not used to revealing the plot, because people who have seen it don't need to say it, and people who haven't seen it should not know too much so as to reduce the fun of watching the movie. In a nutshell, this film tells the story of how, in 18th century France, a man who was obsessed with fragrance, how to realize his life pursuit step by step, even serial murder, and incredible "release".
I specifically went to find some background introductions of the film review, which are very helpful for us to understand this film. The movie is based on a novel. Unfortunately, I haven't read the original book. I will only talk about the points that I found interesting while watching the movie.
At the beginning of the sentence, the magistrate announced that Grenouille would be sentenced to death. The high spirits of the people present showed how deeply people hated Grenouille. From the perspective of the narrative of the whole play, the location of this scene should be close to the last three-quarters, and the director will advance it to play two roles: one is to cause suspense and let the audience pay attention to this scene in the next story. What kind of sins did a character commit, and why did he become the object of scorn? ; The second is to create a contrast with the last climax—the execution—so as to enhance the dramatic effect of the final execution scene.
There are actually many similar structures. There are novels such as "One Hundred Years of Solitude", etc., and there are countless movies. Now I can think of "Dust and Mist Home", "Crash", "Teacher's Favor", "Memories of Murder". , "Prison Break" also has an episode in the second season, which starts with Mike and Lincoln's car overturning the bridge and exploding, and then talking about the cause and effect.
Suspense is the cutest narrative wizard. Through some means, the audience's appetite can be aroused, so that the reader or audience can enter the world you arrange little by little under their own control. This is the author's exclusive pleasure; and excellent suspense and arrangement, Then you can let the audience who finally found the end of the maze enjoy a surprise with you. Since Hitchcock, there are many works that have done enough in the suspense setting. I personally prefer this style of film.
The director has done "Running Rolla" before, and the fast narrative rhythm is still fresh in my memory. In "Perfume", he showed a delicate and rigorous side. The version I watched was 2 hours long, but there was hardly any procrastination or cumbersomeness. But there are two scenes that are obviously more time-consuming, about ten minutes in length. One was Grenouille’s first visit to Paris, and he smelled countless scents, especially the fresh body fragrance mixed with this fruity scent on the girl’s body, which made him find the feeling of true love at once. This feeling becomes the driving force of all his actions; the second is the final execution, from the crowd gathered to watch his death to the final conquest by Grenouille, this scene is the climax of the whole film, the camera is carefully carved , the content is also incredible.
Grenouille kills fifteen women in the film. The first was a manslaughter, the second was an experiment, and only the thirteen deceased behind effectively collected the fragrance to make the perfume of his dreams. The whole process of killing the thirteen women took about 40 minutes. Just imagine how he killed the thirteen women. It would be cumbersome, repetitive, and boring. So the director didn't spread the narrative on everyone, he took almost all of it in one stroke, focusing on the noble daughter, who was the source of the thirteenth bottle of fragrance, Grenouille was infatuated with when he first arrived in Provence, and the process of the father protecting his daughter , which constitutes the counter-force to Grenouille's action, which is the main conflict of this narrative. This arrangement, on the one hand, concentrates the pen and ink. It also creates intense drama.
The scene of the execution at the end deserves a special mention, and it is also the essence of the whole film :) Strange, I haven't seen any words to introduce this scene that can enter the history of film. In my impression, there are 825 naked women in the Korean movie "Magu", and the famous "Roman Pornography" and Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" also have group sex scenes, but I thought that compared with this paragraph, it was all pediatric.
I especially like to pay attention to the extra actors in foreign films, because they are basically of a higher level than the main actors in our film and television dramas. But the crowd scenes in this film still left me stunned. I don't know how the director can control, how to mobilize, and how to pay. Maybe they don't need any money. So many men and women are naked and lying on the ground... It's simply performance art! ! I watched it back and forth several times, and the actors were all dedicated and devoted to the performance, and there were almost no flaws.
A surreal story develops under the background of the realistic plot. This theme always leaves us stunned and deeply impressed, similar to "The Tin Drum" and "Old Boy"... In fact, such films are thematically speaking. Very thematic. The protagonist Grenouille in this film pursues nothing but the feeling of love, the power of love, and for him, the smell of love. But the way he achieved his goal was to kill.
The divine purpose must be obtained through sinful means, and this contrast is one of the factors that makes the plot fascinating; morality and beauty are divided into two unrelated levels in this film. Instead of developing moral hostility toward the murderer, we focus on how he fulfills his ideals and achieves his ultimate goal. Just like those dead girls, although their hair was cut off and their bodies were left naked on the ground, their dead bodies were actually very beautiful. This beauty was strengthened by the last noble daughter. The father opened the door and a dazzling flash In the light, it was the corpse of his daughter.
The bizarre content and the strange characters are all fascinating points of this film, but after careful analysis, although the character of Grenouille is different from ordinary people, there is an obvious background in psychology and psychoanalysis behind it.
One, I've been following the American TV series "Criminal Minds" lately. This film is dedicated to serial killers and serial crimes. A team of the FBI specializes in finding serial criminals through Behavioral Analysis from a psychological point of view. I like watching this film not only because of its fascinating plot, clever writing and directing, but also because I can get a lot of knowledge from it. According to BAU's description of a certain type of serial murderer (Profile), it is almost exactly the same as Grenouille's situation in this film: young male, suffered major setbacks in childhood, engaged in low-level work, silent, submissive, outwardly docile, non-aggressive Sex is inconspicuous in the crowd, but it has a high negative pole. After killing people, you can take souvenirs. In addition, there is a very important point, impotence.
Grenouille was born in the most filthy and rancid Paris fish market. He did not have a normal growth process. Even though he was humiliated, he never resisted. Although he was so obsessed with the smell of women, he never had sex with any woman. normal physical relationships. So, he's a typical pervert through and through. I didn't research the background of the original author, just marveled at how captivating he made the story of this sexual pervert.
Two, we come to Grenouille's obsession with scent.
It was clear that his fascination with scents was closely linked to his sexual urges, and a trip to Paris during his adolescence allowed him to find a scent he loved and indulged in deeply, and this scent taught him the meaning of life. , finds purpose in life, awakens his sexual response - no doubt, Grenouille is typical of fetishism, and his fetish object is smell.
In "Sexual Psychology", Alice specifically discussed the relationship between "sex selection and smell". It is a normal physiological phenomenon to produce a sympathetic response between smell and the reproductive system. But in a small number of people, the sense of smell outweighs other senses, which is called the "smell type" in the phenomenon of fetishism.
I don’t remember Freud’s discussion of fetishism very clearly, but the general meaning is: the moment when the sexual impulse is aroused, the individual’s attention object is not the opposite sex, but the other (initial situation) that has nothing to do with life activities. .
Of course, objects, or smells, can be used as signals of sexual activity, such as seeing a woman's body scent, feet, or underwear can make men sexually aroused. However, the foot fetish is not obsessed with the female body, but the feet themselves, and the same is true of the protagonist, who is obsessed with the scent of women, but his ultimate goal is only the scent itself, not the woman. That's the crux of perversion, the means itself becoming the end, and Grenouille's source of pleasure is all in that captivating smell, the only way to get his satisfaction. Similar movies such as "The Barber's Lover", "Farewell My Concubine"...
Although I think it is possible to identify Grenouille as a mentally ill perverted young man, but the question is here: why is the story of a sick person can cause Our intense aesthetic pleasure? What satisfaction did the audience get from this incredible story and characters? There is no doubt that I was personally satisfied, otherwise I would not have ended the movie with a sigh and was so excited to write this article. However, this kind of excitement itself is worth thinking about.
Several other issues also deserve attention.
One of the reasons that many directors are put off by this film is that it is a film about the sense of smell. Among the main human senses, hearing and sight can be directly narrated, while smell itself cannot express freely. Especially as a film as an audio-visual language, how to describe those charming fragrances in the original book?
I thought the director was still very successful in completing the task, and his method was actually not mysterious. The film cannot show the smell, but the film depicts the feeling of the character after smelling it through various means: through the careful muscle activity, the wonderful performance of the actors, and the audiovisual language to describe the hallucination of the smell. For example, the perfumer smells the fragrance and is like being in a garden, and is favored by beautiful women; for example, the attitude of the people and the bishop to the prisoner has changed, and he regards him as an angel who came to the world. Through similar methods, other sensory forms are used to describe the effect of smell, and good results have been achieved.
Not much else to say, I recommend this movie again, "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer"
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