Based on your responses, it seems that your mind is already made up, but I'll offer this. (That also said, if my response is a rehash of what others have said... I didn't take the time to read all three pages.)
I think another poster mentioned that this is supposed to be that of an adult fairy tale. This film is based on a book, and I think the book does a better job of that. But even in the film, there is sort of a mystical and unrealistic quality to it - his hyperbolic sense of smell, the idea of a perfect scent, the theme of love (yes - love! Read on!)... there's even a moral, as I will explain in my long-a** ramblings below.
I think your analysis (at least based on the first post) seems a bit superficial in that it seems to skim the surface only (not that it is not thought out or 'dumb', because it isn't - it just seems to me that you've viewed the story too literally and focused too much on the surface and less on the characters' thoughts/motives/etc).
There's no rhyme or reason to what he does. There's no higher goal, or even sliver of humanity left in him.
He is led by obsession, especially after he realizes he himself has no scent. In the book, he makes a "perfume" to give him scent, basically his own personal human smell to wear. A man drawn by obsession usually does crazy things, but I think there was a rhyme/reason, although it be grim. Rickman's character said it in the film, that the murderer was "collecting something" and concurred that they were all virgins and had an "especial beauty." The higher goal, initially, is to create the world's most perfect perfume. He begins with humanity and slowly loses it throughout the film as he gets deeper and deeper into his obsession.
That being said, I'm not unaccustomed to watching movies where the lead characters are people who you feel no empathy too...but because it's a deep story, with many layers, and great character portrayal, you enjoy being faced with their challenges, and exploring their thoughts, even if you don't care for them. Even if someone is a "bad person" they still have to face the same issues as everybody else.
I think the way Whishaw portrayed Grenouille is actually pretty empathetic. I don't think he is killing because he enjoys killing. Actually, it's partly sympathy or pity because he is so obsessed he can't even see where he's done wrong. It's a bit of an extreme "the ends justify the means" sort of thing. True, he gets darker and less empathetic as the film goes on--he goes from an accidental murder to an unplanned murder to several planned ones.
His demeanor, more so in the beginning, is very empathetic/sympathetic. He goes through a series of people who don't love him. Even the kids at the orphanage shun him. He's a loner and he clings to the one thing he seems to understand - scent. Who hasn't felt all alone at some point in their life? Yes, Grenouille's example is a bit hyperbolic and what he did (had it been real) would be seriously terrible, but we have seen such examples in real life. Sometimes they are psychopaths, killing for the fun of it, sometimes they kill out of revenge, etc. Grenouille didn't start his campaign wishing to kill. He only did that when it became clear to him that he would not be able to accomplish his goal any other way.
As the film goes on and he gets deeper and deeper into his obsession, he does become less empathetic and sympathetic, but I would personally argue that he never goes into psychopath territory because he has a specific motive to kill these girls, isn't killing for fun, and doesn't kill more than necessary. And, at least in my interpretation of the film, at the moment when he is the least empathetic, that moment when you said he won, when he's standing in nice clothes on the stage where he's supposed to be murderer and instead people are claiming his innocence and his being an angel, where even the person who hates him most and only succumbs when he gets close to Grenouille - this is the moment where he becomes almost the most pitiful of the entirety of the film, because it is the moment he realizes that he has not and never will accomplish his goal - he will never be loved (the reason for creating the perfect perfume) and he will never be able to love in return.
What is the purpose of making it seem like the perfume of distilled dead GIRLS is good enough to change the mind of a grief stricken father into loving the murderer.
Grenouille had accomplished his higher goal - he had created a perfume so perfect and powerful that anyone--even the person who hated him the most in the whole world--would love him. Yet, as he looked out at all of the people loving each other, he realized he had actually failed. As the narrator says, "He was not a person who could love or be loved." This is the point - to show that he has created power over others, but has not created something that will make people genuinely love him (which I interpret to have been his goal).
Throughout his entire life, Grenouille has been unwanted or unloved - his mother tried to kill him the moment he was born, the orphanage owner saw him only as a source of income, the tanner too saw him only as a source of income based on the amount of work he could do, the perfumer used him only for his skills and when he fell sick, the perfumer only cared that he get better so he could give more formulas. Indeed, these were people who did not love Grenouille and they met the same fate as he eventually did. So in the "fairy tale" theory, the story could be (though I imagine you won't agree (: ) interpreted as being about the consequences as the absence love, or even about how you can't make people love you with power. Or, rather, you can force them to 'love' you, but it's not genuine, which is what I believe Grenouille was searching for.
Standing on the stage where he was supposed to be killed, he cries thinking of the girl in Paris that he accidentally killed. He cries imagining what would have happened had she been able to love him. He cries because he now realizes that would never have been possible. And as much as you may disagree, I believe that's what Grenouille truly wanted. He wanted someone to genuinely love him, but every experience in his life had shown him that was not going to happen of its own accord, so he delved into an obsession and a "legend", using any means necessary, as one last attempt to gain genuine love. When that failed, he gave up.
Had Grenouille been a psychopath, he would have used the perfume for any number of things, some examples given by the narrator as he walks into Paris. However, unlike a psychopath, he didn't kill to kill - he killed to fulfill his obsession and purpose, and he was fairly utilitarian. He didn't kill more than necessary for his obsessive goal. As he sees that was all in vain, instead of using the perfume for evil or even simply killing himself and leaving the perfume for someone else to find, he wastes it and lets the crowd devour him - which is what was basically supposed to happen in Gras.
I had no intention of watching a killer's wet dream. And this can only be described as such. The same way a moral person would watch a story where the clear implications of a immoral act paints it as something repulsive
I really disagree. I love this movie, and I don't find the murders 'beautiful' and I don't find them necessarily entertaining. I don't watch this as a 'feel-good movie' (and, indeed, if you expect every film you watch to be so... you won't enjoy many films).
And I also disagree that this is a "killer's wet dream." As I just said, it's not gory. Grenouille doesn't hack the bodies up. He even kills them in such a way that there is no blood. It's a very quick death and isn't even shown on screen. There are several other films that I could think would better be described as such, including perhaps "Funny Games" (even though this film is actually supposed to be a commentary on finding horror films entertaining), "Saw", actual snuff films, etc. I don't think the film was made to glamorize the killings. If it was, they would be portrayed on screen very differently, and much more time would be devoted to the actual act of Grenouille killing the girls. Being young virgin girls, I think the film actually handles the murders/discovery/perfume making quite gracefully and tastefully (especially when you think of how it could have been portrayed).
I watch it for the cinematography but also the story. It is fictional, so I guess I'm not really disgusted by the murders since they aren't real or gory or really even seen. A blow to the back of the head is implied but never really seen. The acting is magnificent - Whishaw, I think (though you obviously disagree!), for me, does make Grenouille empathetic and increasingly less so until his 'epiphany' at the end.
He does, I think, feel remorse for what he's done, especially since it hasn't helped him. If you think about it, Grenouille was left to die several times in his lifetime -his mother kicked him into a pile of dead fish upon his birth; a child tried to smother him immediately upon his arrival at the orphanage; the life span at the tannery was usually very short; had the perfumer not cared that he would not be able to give formulas, the sickness would have eaten him; the perfumer left him to travel across 16th/17th century France alone with little more than a sausage (I'm no historian but I'm certain there would have been bandits or whatever who would have killed him for any belongings he MAY have had, not to mention the fact that he may very well have died of starvation - point is, the perfumer really didn't care what happened to Grenouille. He had his formulas.)... This is why he is empathetic to me. Not to say that he doesn't know any better, but he hasn't had any formal schooling and I'm sure in that time period, murders in general (perhaps not in a town as small as Gras, but certainly Paris where he spent a lot of his life) happened more often than they do today, for dumber reasons than his. He is empathetic because, at first, he is pitiable because of his ignorance and his life's misfortune. He slowly loses this empathy, becoming a very unlikable character (especially after he kills the one victim the audience gets to know), and then doing almost a 180 at the end when he realizes his attempt was for naught and he realizes his terrible deeds and ends his life, destroying the powerful perfume in the process. How could he not have become misguided with an ends-justify-the-means when you look at all the mentor figures in his life? They all had that same mentality in almost hyperbolic quantities!
Grenouille just wanted some lovin'.
I would also like to state for the record that I disagree with whomever made the "Christ" allusion. They'd REALLY have to give me a good reason for that one.
(sorry, that got quite wordy and in places a bit redundant...that's what I get for being an English major.)
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