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"Perfume" or Something Stinks

The movie was ruined for me before I even sat down to watch it, but I didn't know it.

"Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" looked pretty juicy in the previews. It seemed like it would be worth going to just because Dustin Hoffman was in it with his suitably big nose.
Plus, I'd just finished reading the book of the same name by Patrick Suskind. The novel was enthralling, repellant and fascinating at the same time.
"Perfume" the book was translated from the German, so I'm not sure if it was Suskind's intention, but the style was old-fashioned without being unreadable.
In other words, it wasn't like grabbing good ol' Dickens and then realizing that you were going to have to invest some time and serious brainpower to follow the story. Well, worth it, of course.
Instead, the style of "Perfume" was part of the ambiance that sweeps the reader along.
The anti-hero is a wierd character who at first evokes pity and then fear.
His sniffer is an ubernose, and what he lacks in basic human skills, he has in aroma savvy.
But it's that lack of basic skills -- or basic humanity, really -- that ends up defining Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the French dude with the amazing schnoz.
The story is set in all the filth and insanity of 18th Century France, giving readers a quick lesson in the ickiness and lack of sanitary conditions in that period.
It seems perfume was one of the things that made life bearable in all that stink.
Having devoured the book over a weekend, I set out the next weekend to go to the discount show at the E Street Cinema in D.C.'s Chinatown.
What a waste.
The movie pretty slavishly followed the book, leaving out a lot, of course.
That turned the experience into a stinkin' bore.
So what's the lesson learned from this and from the aforementioned "The Painted Veil" experience?
Go see the movie, and then read the book.
The book will always be more detailed, for one thing, and you'll have the experience of getting inside an author's head. For another, the movie might be radically different as in "The Painted Veil."
If so, then you've hit gold.

Posted by Trish Choate at 02:35 PM | Permalink