Movie Review, by request - Perfume

So yeah. It's been Serial Killer Movie Month at my house. I had Zodiac already at home from Netflix, when Wiwille asked that I review The Young Poisoner's Handbook and Memophage asked that I review Perfume: The story of a Murderer. Like the movie, this review is going to be long and complex. Hang in there.

Based on a novel by Patrick Süsskind that I feel I absolutely must read now, the film tells the story of a young man in 18th century Europe with a super-powered sense of smell who tries to capture the scent of beautiful women in a perfume. To do so, he has to kill them.

But it is far, far more complex than that. Like some of the stories and jokes I tell, this movie takes a long, long time (2.5 hours) to reach an ending that seems (at least on the surface) to have little to do with the beginning - especially if you watch the extra features on the DVD and hear the director's interpretation of the ending's meaning, which has nothing to do with the start. The movie is filled with a lot of vague metaphors and veiled symbolism, which I generally don't care for in a movie.

However! Given a little distance, the metaphors and meanings become more apparent, and blend together to reveal a fairly coherent story - much like the way the perfumes are said to be constructed in the film. The more I think about this one, the more brilliant I find the writing. To construct an entire story in a similar way to how you describe one of the most complex and difficult to describe components of the story is genius.

The main theme in the film (or the "core" of the perfume, as described in the movie) is really "alienation", and it does a fine job of showing the various stages and effects of alienation and being extremely different. The main character is, in the beginning, shunned and misunderstood for being different, then accepted by someone for having an unusual talent, then is shown to exist outside of society because of his extreme difference and the wall it puts between him and others. The gift/curse dual nature of such extreme difference is prevalent throughout, and results in obsession that only heightens the alienation aspect. In the end, the results of the difference are the means of both his salvation and destruction.

Now, that's all about the writing and the story. Of the mechanics of film, I would say the cinematography is the most standout feature. It's not hard to make a beautiful film out of the backdrops of European country side that some of the movie is set in, but to make a beautiful film out of sets recreating dinghy, ugly, overcrowded, dirty 18th century cities is - but it is pulled off wonderfully in this movie.

The acting is good, but more for a matter of casting than anything else. Dustin Hoffman is excellent, as one would expect, and Alan Rickman commands scenes as he always does. The actor who plays the main character looks weird enough and is forgettable enough to fit the role of the outsider.

This is not to say the movie is perfect. The beginning is so long, and so drawn out, it seems at first to have little purpose. It would be easy to condense the first hour into about 15 minutes and set up the rest of the film. This is why the film is better at a distance - you get more meaning, at the risk of putting off viewers with less patience. In retrospect I have trouble saying the beginning was "too long", but if you had asked me an hour and a half into the movie I would have said it was ridiculously drawn out.

The 3rd-party-omniscient narration is annoying and totally unnecessary, and only used in the beginning (heavily) and then sparsely distributed at wholly inopportune times throughout the rest of the film.

The story has several fantastical elements that make it very, very difficult to suspend disbelief. That first hour was necessary just to get me to go along with the whole "super sense of smell" thing, and after that my suspension of disbelief was tried by it a few times (for those that have seen it: when he's on the road following the object of his obsession - that was ridiculous). The ending pulls out a whopper that is even more difficult to swallow, even given the somewhat heavy-handed foreshadowing by Hoffman's character earlier on.

The actresses in the film were obviously chosen for their beauty and not their acting talent. The young woman who plays the main obsession delivers her lines about as well as a cardboard cut-out and certainly cannot keep up with the likes of Alan Rickman.

To keep to the idea of making my review like the film, I'm going to end it abruptly right here. If you have patience and like a well-crafted story that requires thought, watch this one. Otherwise, stick to Hostel: part way too many or whatever.

- Mattbear, movie snob, out.