From the story, to the actors, to the picture, to the music - the film is like a perfume, the breath is fascinated and unforgettable. Not sure if I have the guts to watch it again.
Detoxification by words, although writing so pale.
The story is about
a man, Grenouille, who was born without his own body odor, but has the most sensitive sense of smell in the world. After encountering a girl with a charming body scent, he follows the scent and kills her inadvertently. He is infatuated with the fading scent, and death will take away all the charming scents, so he has an obsession - just like perfume can store the scent of flowers, he wants to use a bottle to perpetuate the fragrance of a girl's body Reserve.
After becoming the most prominent perfumer, he learned the secret to preserving scent, and from then on began his mad killing spree.
Such a male protagonist can make people feel pity, fear or disgust, but not hate.
Never loved or been loved, and the only way to finally prove your existence is to make perfume the best it can be. A drop of this kind of fragrance, when he drips it on himself, can make the world fascinated and worship - he finally stood on the top of the world in this game, from the most humble son of the poor, a murderer who is about to be executed. , became an angel in the eyes of everyone, and even the Pope bowed his head in front of this miracle.
He also began to get carried away, so he sprinkled another drop of the perfume, and the effect was even stronger. The people were entangled with the fragrance, lost their minds, tens of thousands of people were lustful, they took off their clothes and had sex with the people around them - the pope and the noblewoman hugged, the untouchable and the noble were intertwined, the old and the girl, the man and the man, the woman And women...lack of any intellectual or mundane boundaries, a marvelous orgy.
The only one who is sober is him, the maker of this perfume. He had never expected this kind of scene. He stood dazedly on the high execution platform, watching everyone bare all the beautiful, ugly, white, dark, and aging bodies. , forget everything.
And the girl who was suffocated by him covering her mouth and nose at first suddenly revived from her memory. He went back to that adventure in the streets of Paris a few years ago, when he was an apprentice cobbler. Dirty streets splattered with mud and splendid perfume shops are a new world completely different from this real world - those richly dressed ladies, those gentlemen in ridiculous wigs, they gently sprinkle a wonderful drop of water on their wrists On - he was standing outside the window, knocked down by the intimidating aura. But the red-haired girl passing by exudes a more moving scent than all the perfumes in the world.
She's just a poor girl who sells fruit. Her face is not so beautiful, but she has the most beautiful body fragrance.
He followed her for a long distance before she discovered this dark boy. She turned her head and smiled at him, the golden fruit flowing lustrously between her palms.
"Do you want it? Four Sur and two."
He was bewitched by the breath and didn't know how to answer her. He just held the hand that was stretched out tightly, buried his face in the palm and left, greedy. Smell her.
And she was startled, broke free from him and ran away.
How could she possibly escape his pursuit? He has a better sense of smell than a hound. He followed the smell all the way to the girl's residence.
The picture is like an oil painting, Rembrandt-like light, Reynolds-like girl. A pale yellow halo, long golden red hair, in a dark background, only the one she is in is full of light and warmth. She lowered her head and intently cut the unsold apricots in half and removed the pits, perhaps to process them into dried apricots. In short, she worked so seriously that she didn't notice him who was approaching quietly behind her.
He didn't mean to hurt the girl, he was just addicted to her breath. Standing behind her, she gently approached her bare neck and shoulders. She found out, she was frightened, she was about to cry out. And a couple just came down from the upstairs. Panicked, he covered her mouth. She struggled, and he held her tighter. The couple was unaware of the strangeness around them, and they kissed for a long time at the entrance of the stairs. He could only hold the girl tightly in his arms and cover her mouth and nose tightly. When the couple walked away, he realized that she had suffocated to death.
Grenouille has never had any guilt or remorse for this unintentional killing. There is no such thing as right and wrong in his worldview, and no one has ever taught him this. But now, when he witnessed the madness of the world, he suddenly understood-he wanted to keep the charming body fragrance of the unknown girl forever, and there was another way, he could be like these people in front of him, Gently stroked her, kissed her, fell in love with her, merged with her...
In the hallucination, he was no longer quietly approaching from behind, but stood in front of the girl and looked directly at the girl's face. The fruit in her hand rolled down, and she smiled at him, more gentle than the first smile she had when she first met. She greeted his kiss, so soft and warm. She was still alive, with a wonderful fragrance that only belonged to her...
For the first time in her life, Grenouille shed tears.
He staggered out of the small town, back to the poor, pickled, revolting street where he was born. The meanest people in Paris gather here, and Grenouille knows he belongs here too. In the dark of night, he poured a whole bottle of perfume on himself. People are summoned by the aroma, just like flies are attracted by rotten stinky meat. First in twos and threes, then in groups, crazy people rushed to him. In order to obtain this aroma, people tore him and devoured him.
At dawn, only Grenouille's clothes were left in the mud, and there were already empty perfume bottles.
The actor
Grenouille has almost no lines, and some actions are still a little green, but his eyes make up for everything - nervous eyes, unfocused eyes, eyes that are pure as water even when killing people. A paranoid look, or an artist's look.
At the last moment, as he walked towards death, looking at the people on that street, his eyes seemed to be mocking? It seems to be liberation? Is it the pride of having everything under control? Tired of seeing everything? His eyes changed, leaving a mysterious ending.
The light, shadow and contours in the picture
film are reminiscent of Goya's paintings. Gothic dark and eerie and Rococo bright and moving, picturesque days and perilous nights.
The director and the cinematographer brought the beauty and ugliness to the extreme. Those rotten and fetid maggots tumbling viscera, the leprosy on half of the face of the cobbler's shop owner, the bloody childbirth... It really challenges the nerves of the audience, the kind of ugliness that will directly bring about a physiological reaction that makes people sick and sick. And those people, greedy people, cruel people, ugly people.
Likewise, the beauty in the film astounds me.
In the early morning, on the steam-drenched river, the magnificent stone bridge and the layers of ancient houses on the bridge are all shrouded in a quiet light gray mist.
Desolate and steep mountains.
Swaying in the lavender wind, a field of purple dream.
A girl harvests flowers like a farmer harvests wheat.
The golden flower fields are undulating in the wind, and the town of Grasse gives an illusion - Babylon made of white stones.
The dark interior and night are like scenes from the Harry Potter series; while the stone-built city, the magnificent and open natural scenery, is like the scenery in The Lord of the Rings.
The girls who were killed were all beautiful, and the twisted posture after death was also beautiful, and the most beautiful was Luna, who looked at Grenouille before her death, as clear as a baby or an angel. The white sheets, the red-haired girl, and the strange and beautiful death bring indescribable power to these images.
Music
dark music. At the beginning of most of the pieces, unknown instruments play shrill high notes, and then a wind band joins in, adding a somber sound to this ominous high note. The strings play and wander on notes you didn't expect. What follows is a monotonous pluck, like the ticking of a pendulum or the sound of footsteps, bringing a sense of oppression and crisis. The sound of the harp is like water, cold and ding-dong, and the low harmony of the girls' chorus is like the low voice of the siren in Debussy's "The Sea".
What impressed me the most was the soundtrack when Grenouille met the red-haired girl. The soprano's voice floated from far, far away, like the call of some kind of magic spell. "Come on, come on." The witch laughed and sank to the bottom of the lake, her red hair rippling on the blue waves, like the most dangling aquatic plants. Those who hear this call willingly drown in bottomless waters. The harmony of the violin and people sounded together, and the notes extended in the direction of light, like a beam of light suddenly projected in the darkness, leading people's souls to fly higher. Then there is a violin solo, with the clear dub of the harp, which tells a wonderful vision - Grenouille sees the girl, the redhead, not the witch, more like a genie, a fresh flower, There are countless dreams and secrets in the basket between the arms. The music is softer, the harp plucked alone, with a tenderness so subtle that it is imperceptible. The double bass has an ominous undertone in this tenderness. Then there was a few seconds of silence, and the female voice sounded again - again the call of charm, the call of fragrance, the fragrance beckoned, whispered, whispered: "Come on, come on..." Grenouille was bewitched , fascinated, lost his soul, and lost his soul, he followed the call away. After a few twists and turns, the voice disappeared into the depths of darkness.
When I met Luna, the music was like a church choir, with solemn beauty and sadness. The female vocal solo recreates the bright string when Grenouille met the red-haired girl. Luna has the same golden red hair, and she is more beautiful than that girl, and she has a more moving body fragrance. The violin sighed the inner tremor of this encounter with a continuous vibrato. But no, the only person who gave Grenouille an extraordinary love was the red-haired girl he met for the first time, Luna. Although she was of noble birth, beautiful, and kind-hearted, these had nothing to do with Grenouille. All he paid attention to was her body fragrance, and what he was looking for was the feeling of deja vu brought by this girl—her red hair, her fragrance, her smile... how similar she was to that poor girl. He, Grenouille, could extract that refreshing breath from her, and from then on this beauty belonged to him, only to him.
It's not that I wrote "Love"
to the end, and found that I seem to understand "Perfume" as a romantic literary film, and describe Grenouille, the murderer, as the number one infatuation worthy of sympathy.
In fact, the feeling of "Perfume" to me is not "love", but "beauty". Just as every picture pursues perfection, what the film tells is the pursuit of "beauty". This paranoid pursuit subverts the moral framework and departs from the category of good and evil. Grenouille's inexplicable love originated from the girl's strange body fragrance; his endless killing was also driven by the pursuit of fragrance - fragrance, the carrier of "beauty". In the end, under the fascination of the fragrance, people indulge in lust, and they respect murderers like gods. It is nothing more than in front of the ultimate beauty. You have no way out except to bow down and bow your head.
In other words, Grenouille represents absolute loneliness. When he stood on the execution platform and watched the scene of this apocalyptic carnival, he just realized that he could not integrate into this world without his body smell. The only link was the red-haired girl who inspired his emotions like his first love, and he had killed himself. dead her.
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