outlandish ending...

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but like many of you, I felt the ending was too ridiculous, almost laughable, and just plain upsetting.

I appreciate all of the comments defending the ending - I read them all - but if you were enjoying the film and fully engrossed in it only to be yanked out of it by a ridiculous ending, then you can safely and unabashedly and even insolently proclaim that it was a good movie that was ruined by the last few scenes. in particular, the mass orgy and vagrant cannibalism.

How I expected it to end, and how I hoped it would end, would be to keep the orgy/angel scene intact, but for it all to be in Grenouille's elaborate daydream. I would believe that if everyone had their olfactory senses as keen as Grenouille's (i.e. the ability to smell a rag from 100 feet away, and the ability to appreciate it as the finest perfume ever made), then that would induce the mass hysteria/ love fest that ensued. Grenouille would then snap out of it, perhaps by the snapping of his own bones as the executioner delivered 13 blows to each of his joints - one for each victim. His death would become tragic, and almost lamentable - the death of a misunderstood character.

And we wouldn't have to introduce awkward plot devices, like how they all "forgot" what just happened and continued looking for suspects, and he wouldn't have to be devoured by homeless people.

Perhaps then, we could appreciate what he did without being pulled out of the moment by the incredibly outlandish and somewhat dissatisfying ending.

plus... he didn't really have to kill his victims, did he (if they were acquiescent, that is)? Nothing about murdering them enhances the fragrance, does it?