Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Lisa Brandel was kind enough to do a guest post today. Enjoy it and be sure to check out her blog, "The Widow Lady" a great resource for the grieving.

The film opens to a very dark scene. A young man, grubby looking, with a single shackle around his neck. He leans forward, so his nose is exposed to the light, but his face is still obscured by the darkness. He smells the air. You can hear a crowd cheering in the distance. Guards come in to get the man in shackles from his cell, and he doesn’t fight as he is brought before a jeering crowd. The crowd clearly wants him dead. We are then introduced to Jean Baptiste, the perfumer. The man reads his sentence, of Jean, a heinous execution where all forms of mercy are forbidden.
The narrator then explains to us that we are in 18th century France, and speaks about Jean as being a notorious figure in an ethereal art, the realm of scent.

In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. Naturally, the stench was foulest in Paris, for Paris was the largest city in Europe. And nowhere in Paris was that stench more profoundly repugnant than in the city's fish-market. It was here then, on the most putrid spot in the whole kingdom, that Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born on the 17th of July, 1738. It was his mothers fifth birth, she delivered them all here under her fish-stand, and all had been stillbirths or semi-stillbirths. And by evening the whole mess had been shoveled away with the fish-guts into the river. It would be much the same today, but then... Jean-Baptiste chose differently.
We are then taken back in time to Jean’s birth. The scene is a gritty stylized street in France where we see his mother, a fishmonger, cutting fish. She is overcome with a cramp and drops behind the filthy curtain of her fish stand where she gives birth. She grabs the same knife she had been cutting fish with, cuts the umbilical cord, leaves the baby where she squeezed it out and returns, somewhat worse for wear, to her fish. The narrator explains this is the woman’s fifth birth and that up to this point all her babies had been born dead, or nearly so.
The baby is laying in a pile of fish guts and filth, but this little one is breathing, or more specifically smelling the horrid market around him. A few moments later, as his mother serves a man, he begins to scream. She runs, and the people of the market accuse her of trying to murder her own child. The narrator gives us a subtle foreshadow, telling us that Jean’s first utterance sends his mother to the gallows.
Meanwhile Jean is taken to a Paris orphanage. The conditions there are only slightly better than the festering market from which he came. One boy moves to poke the baby, to see if it is alive, when the baby grabs his finger, pulls it to his nose and sniffs it. This freaks all the children and they try to smother it. The proprietress of the orphanage saves Jean, because for her the baby is a source of income.
We next see Jean at age five. He is walking through the orphanage “garden” picking what seems to be random things up from the ground and smelling them. A twig, a leaf, and an apple, his nose follows these three smells to the tree they came from. He seems to be enjoying this combination, when he smells the air again and dodges out of the way of an apple meant to hit him in the back of the head.

The narrator explains as we see Jean smelling the remains of a dead rat, that the children don’t hate him, they are just unnerved by his odd behavior. Then we get to see Jean pick up the rat, and get the sense that Jean smells not just the rat, but the worms eating the rat from the inside.
The narrator goes on to explain that Jean’s sense of smell is so detailed that language fails to capture what olfactory sensations he is experiencing. We see Jean traveling with his nose trying to capture what he is smelling in words, but failing to do so.
At thirteen, the proprietress of the orphanage sells Jean to a filthy and diseased looking man who owns a tannery. As she leaves with her seven sue a pair of thieves slit her throat and take her money, leaving her to die on the street. We start to see a pattern emerge that whoever touches Jean’s life ends up dead.
The conditions at the tannery are as disgusting as they have been throughout Jean’s life. And the Narrator explains that the life expectancy of a boy who works there is about five years. He also says that Jean seems to be as resilient as a bacteria, an interesting choice of words at this point, since it is made clear that Jean has about as much in common with humanity as bacteria does.
Jean thrives in the harsh conditions, and dreams of smelling all that the city of Paris has to offer. He is rewarded for his hard work and diligence with just that, and is taken into society for the first time on a leather delivery.
Jean follows his owner through the streets with his eyes closed. The camera shows us what he is “seeing” with his nose. He is taking in good smells and bad, not caring what he smells wanting only the new sensation of it. Once the leather is delivered, Jean is left on his own, and he finally smells something that draws his complete attention, a perfumer’s shop.
He stands at the window taking in the different smells, listening to what this perfumer is showing his affluent clients. It is pretty clear he is enraptured with what he is experiencing.
Then, Jean smells something, rather someone else. The camera shows us a glimpse of a woman carrying a basket of fruit, and we see Jean following his nose toward her. He follows the young woman stopping long enough to take her in from a distance, then running to catch up with her again.
When she pauses, Jean is right behind her (smelling her). He startles her and when she tries to talk to him he just stands there awestruck of what he is smelling. She is a beautiful young woman, but he doesn’t notice that, he only notices her scent. When she offers to sell him some of her fruit, he grabs her hand, pressing his nose into her palm. She runs away scared, and fireworks start to explode over Jeans’ head. He chases after her.

She is sitting cutting the fruit away from the crowds of Paris, and we see Jean behind her again smelling her. She turns and screams when she see’s him. A couple is coming down from some unseen upstairs, and Jean cover’s the woman’s mouth. He holds her tight until the couple is gone. We see her struggling under his hand, and as the couple disappears she stops. Jean has accidentally suffocated her.
He releases her, presumably to talk to her, but then notices she is lifeless. He carefully lays her down. He seems to feel bad, but immediately tears off her clothes to smell every inch of her body. He only starts to cry really, when whatever it was he smelled on her in life starts to disappear.
Jean gets beaten by his owner for “running off” and we see that the pain of the beating hardly phases him. He seems in this scene too far gone in the pain of losing this sublime scent he found in that dead woman. That idea is reinforced when we see him sitting up on a filthy floor lost in thoughts. We are told by the narrator that Jean decides in that moment he must learn how to preserve scents.
It cuts away from Jean to introduce Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman). Baldini is an aging out of touch Italian perfumer living and working in his show (located on a bridge in Paris). His competition has created a perfume called, “Amore and Psyche” which is all the rage. Baldini apparently used to be one of the top perfumers in Paris, but no longer, and it clearly troubles him. We are also given the information that each perfume has a head chord, heart chord, and base. Which means that there are 12 notes (four notes or smells per chord). Baldini spends hours trying to smell the chords of the “Amore and Psyche” perfume, and cannot seem to settle on what he is smelling. He works at it to exhaustion, falling asleep in his chair with a mess of kerchiefs around him, and no success on discovering the perfumes secret.
A knock comes to the door late that night, it is Jean delivering some leather. Baldini leads Jean into his laboratory which is filled with hundreds, if not thousands of essential oils used for the art of perfume making. Jean boldly suggests that Baldini wants to make the leather smell like Amore and Psyche. The two banter a bit, and Jean claims to have the best nose in Paris. Baldini is offended, and challenges Jean to tell him the secret of the perfume. Jean pulls out everything needed to make it, then offers to fill any sized container with the perfume. Baladini is irritated, but agrees.
Jean makes the perfume; Baldini tests it and is shocked to find that the perfume is a perfect duplication. Then Jean affronts him again stating that it isn’t a good perfume, but he could make it “More better”. He does, but Baldini refuses to try it, and sends Jean away. Jean begs to work for him, but he sends him into the night.
After Jean has left, Baldini opens the cap the to the improved perfume and sniffs. His lab melts away and he is transported to an Italian garden, where a buxom Italian hottie kisses him on the cheek, telling him that she loves him. One gets the feeling that Jean has made an olfactory orgasm, which is reinforced when Baldini goes to the tannery and purchases Jean for 50 Francs. The ridiculously large sum makes the owner of the tannery laugh, and he sends Jean away for the price.
Before the story moves on with Jean, we see that Jean’s last owner celebrates his good fortune. Alas, like that last two people in Jean’s life he doesn’t end well at all, and doesn’t live to spend all the money he made selling Jean.
With Jean working for Baldini his business flourishes beyond even it’s former glory, the narrator tells us. Unlike the “masters” or people who owned Jean before, Baldini does take care of Jean. He does what he promises, teaching Jean the secret art of perfumery. He explains that each perfume has a head, heart, and base chord, and also that the Egyptians believed that there was a secret 13th chord that would make the absolute perfect perfume that would be remembered for all time.

Jean often has a vacant stare. He says very little ever, but you get the feeling he is taking in more than what Baldini is saying, understanding better what he is being taught than the master does who explains it. Baldini tells him of a legend of a Pharoh’s tomb being discovered and an ample of perfume opened with one of the mythical 13th notes and for an instant everyone on the planet thought they were in paradise. Baldini goes on to say that 12 of the essences could be identified, but the 13th could not.
Jean asks why. Baldini is confused, “What do you mean why not? Because it is a legend, numbskull.”

“What’s a legend?” Jean asks, and it becomes clear again that while he has this master talent he lacks the basic understanding of humans, and human culture.
That night Jean dreams of the perfect scented woman again. When Baldini wakes him Jean demands he teach him how to capture the scent of all things. Jean says that Baldini told him the very soul of something gives it its scent. He promises Baldini he will make him the greatest perfume that was ever made if he teaches him everything he knows. They have a deal.
Baldini show’s Jean how to extract the “soul” of a rose, and explains that the roses must go to their death with the soul intact. Using an alembic they extract the essential oil that gives the rose it’s scent.
Jean then is found picking up metal trash along the bank of a river. He goes back to Baldini’s alembic and tries to extract what he smells.
Baldini is awakened by crashing sounds in his lab. He finds a distraught Jean, who shoves beakers under his nose as he claims Baldini lied to him. He has tried to extract the smell of glass, copper, rocks, and Baldini’s cat. The master perfumer explains that he can no more capture those scents than he can capture the scent of Baldini or him. This troubles Jean greatly, and you can see in his face instant tumult. Jean says, “You can’t?” Baldini says, “Of course not…”
Jean faints. In the next scene, Jean is in a bed and the doctor says he is dying. Baldini sits by his bed distraught (you get the feeling he is mourning the loss of his cash, not Jean). Jean opens his eyes and asks if there is any other way to capture scent. Baldini confesses that there is a mysterious art called enfleurage that he cannot teach him, but he could probably learn in the Rome of perfumery, Grass.
In order to get a job in Grass, Jean needs a journeyman’s papers, which Baldini agrees to supply Jean in exchange for no less than 100 perfume formulas. Jean leaves, and Baldini is pleased with himself, but like all the people who have touched or been touched by Jean, it doesn’t end well.
The narrator tells us that he is deeply satisfied, and went back to sleep, but awoke no more…in this life. We see of all the buildings on the bridge, his and his alone collapses in on itself.
Up to this point in the story all the deaths (except the cat) surrounding Jean have been one’s of circumstance, but as Jean learns the mysterious arts of capturing scent in the town of Grass, that changes. On his journey to Grass though, he takes a long and winding road. Alone as he had never been before, Jean makes a startling discovery…he has no scent of his own. It made him fear his own oblivion, and realize he had been a nobody to everyone all of his life because of it.
He continues his journey into Grass, and just before he gets there he smells another woman coming toward him in a carriage. It is a rich, beautiful red head, Lauara, daughter of Antioine Richis (Alan Rickman). Jean stalks their house, after finding it by following her scent, but leaves after nearly coming in contact with the young girl.
Jean goes to work in Grass for a woman, and begins to learn the art of capturing the scent of living things in the art of enfleurage. The mistress explains to the people sticking the flowers in the animal fat that it allows the flowers to “die in their sleep”, thus preserving their scent.
Jean tries his experiment, this new technique right away, only not on flowers, but a beautiful blond girl who works in the fields. She would be the first, of 13…as he begins to create his own scent, one that would live eternally.

My thoughts:
Perfume has a fairytale like feel. There is allegory, and fantastic happenings in the midst of a highly stylized look. Every character is an honest representation of people we all know, only no one is the ‘hero’ per-say in this story. Each character is flawed in some very basic human way. They all ‘stink’ of despair and some kind of desire or need. All except one, Jean-Baptist. He truly is outside of humanity, and the story teller let’s us know that rather quickly. He has no scent, and no real concept of human relations, and it seems no ability to learn them.
The scent is used in this film as a metaphor for the soul if a living thing, and apparently, Jean has none. He is an empty vessel, and comes to believe that he can make himself full with what he takes from others. We see him in the story as neither good nor evil through most of the movie, and then he kills, not on accident but with purpose in mind. He has not changed though, only what his actions have. He does hold the scent (soul) as being something precious, but not on any human level we would understand, but something he can use to make himself real.

There is a moral of sorts to the end of the story, but hardly one you’d think of in a classic sense. Jean does achieve his goals, but as you might assume from the beginning of the movie at a very high cost. That isn’t where the story ends though, and if you are up for a movie/fairytale with a truly classic Grimm’s ending, then don’t miss Perfume.