By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Senses of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
“I am made of blue sky and golden light and I will feel this way for another 15 seconds.”
How about that sensual, insinuating orchestral score for the film adaptation of Patrick Suskind’s literary thriller PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER?
Director Tom Tykwer knows that music well–he composed it, writes Richard J. Wright of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. That’s yesterday’s edition, Jan. 1, 2007.
You can tell that Wright, like Tykwer, is a musician. Not that the piece was esoteric. But I wish I’d written it. I couldn’t have. I’m not a musician. But I tried anyway.
So there is this piece in today’s Boston Globe, as it touches upon director Tywker (and his co-composers) effort tocapture the essence of Suskind’s lush, ironic prose, and screenwriter Andrew Birkin‘s lush, ironic screenplay.
As the reporter of that story, I regret that I was unable to deliver only a cursory impression of the Tykwer hair (spikey/vertical), his nervous habits (styling product deficit? Beethoven audition later that day?), and his connection to the score (he done it, in collaboration with his usual collaborators.)
Go to the movie’s website and tell me if the score (and the film, should you see it) doesn’t work on you after you’ve fallen asleep.
I did speak to the lead actor, Ben Whishaw, who was recently cast in Todd Haynes’ I’M NOT THERE, a film about Bob Dylan, and Bernd Eichinger, the film’s producer, whose tenacity and passion for this extraordinary novel, had much to do with getting PERFUME to the screen after so many years in print.
Eichinger, who cowrote DOWNFALL, is now producing three more films, an adaptation of THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES, based on the novel by Michel Houellebecq, a drama about the Baader-Meinhof gangwhich terrorized West Germany from the mid 1970s to mid 1980s,
The reviews for Perfume are as varied as readers’ impressions of the novel: loved it, hated it, didn’t get it:
Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times praised the look of the film, but says its tone is all over the place. Nathan Rabin of The Onion didn’t particularly like the film, he did acknowledge PERFUME’s power to get under one’s skin, describing as a “terrible, terrible film that everyone should see and will haunt me until the day I die.” The “Perfume Paradox,” he calls it–imperfect movies, disturbing movies, that you can’t stop thinking about.
Peter Sobcynski of Hollywood Bitchslap, whom I always trust to speak from his heart about films he delights in, expresses “giddy admiration” for PERFUME. If you’re on his wavelength about other movies, then you’ve got to see the film right now.
The usually genteel A.O. Scott of the New York Times sneers (“scratch ‘n’ sniff” – “Smell-O-Vision”) before administering to the director a 43rd St. skullfucking : “Whereas Mr. Süskind portrayed this condition in ripe, sarcastic prose, Mr. Tykwer’s method is one of stupefying literalism. Exploiting the lush, lurid tones of Frank Griebe’s cinematography, he rubs our noses in Grenouille’s world by assaulting our eyes with what he smells.”
