MovieChat Forums > Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2007) Discussion > How can someone *enjoy* this movie

How can someone enjoy this movie

posted 15 years ago by santaatsea
75 replies | jump to latest

Ok, first of all. I think the movie is brilliantly made, the cinematographics is gorgeous, and evocative (how hard can it be to translate scent to images), and the actors are brilliant, directing is brilliant...

that being said, I would rather have a tooth extraction then see this movie again. It is a horrible story, not in the sense that it's badly made, it's quite geniously made, but it's not possible to enjoy it unless you ARE an actual psychopath.

Any normal person can't empathise with the murderer, how *can* you. How can you not empathise with the murdered women, be revolted at the idea that redheaded virgins are pure and smell nice and should be bottled up, and have their bodies be thrown out like trash after they were "used". Any normal person would be completely revolted, and wish the man caught, and put out of his misery (because he is not in any way reformable).

Except the more you watch, the more women are killed, and their families destroyed, and the city scared into insanity, and finally, one of the victims, of which we are shown enough to start caring for, .... is killed to. The killer wins. :|. Yay, I'm feeling incredibly artisticly pleased now...not.

That being said, I'm not unaccustomed to watching movies where the lead characters are people who you feel no empathy too. An anti-hero can be done very well, I don't require that good wins, and that bad loses, that's stuff for kids or people who don't realise the world isn't such a cosy place. Take fpr example Oz, or Deadwood, virtually no redeemable characters, 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.

But in Perfume, there's nothing deep about the story. It's all superficial, and indulgent. Pretty lace, and pretty imagery, and the completely egotistical exploring of the world by scent the killer...and that's it. There's no rhyme or reason to what he does. There's no higher goal, or even sliver of humanity left in him. The story is just so....empty. Except the gruesome and again indulgent portrayal of the murders and disposal of the bodies.

THAT BEING SAID.... this went quite further then showing a grim reality as it was. Up until the very end, it was simply a grim realistic portrayal of a killer's mind, and his world. Fascinating, scary, repulsive, but still, interesting....

...and then turns out the killer's insane brain workings are right? What the EFF? How can you paint murder so realistically and brutal, and then give it an ending only an actual killer could warm up to. I mean, for goodness sake, validating what he did changed my disgust from the killer and took me out of the story into just shaking my head and wondering what the writer was thinking. 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. How sick can you get and for what purpose then to make a story as sick as possible? Why not make the father become sexually attracted to the killer too, and to blow him on the spot, for added shock factor.

And it's so JARRING. 90% of the movie is realistic, and then we're thrown into a world that functions to the beat of a mad man. I don't think so.

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...this is a SICK story, where a killer's acts are justified by finding some use to his murders.

Phew. Anyways, I'm still disgusted. The movie has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It reminds me of a colleague of mine who gets a kick out of looking at pictures of mangled bodies, and murder scene photos. But at least he doesn't sugarcoat it and call it "enjoyment of art". Can I ask, what exactly do people ENJOY out of the story? Can you LIKE the murderer? Why and how?

[–] verbusen 12 years ago

Nice post, I agree with you and only watched the first part up till the house collapsing. No way I would want to watch this if I had a choice (was at a friends house and it was on until someone changed the channel). Happy I didn't start the next 2 hours for this complete in your face abuse.

[–] winzentween 12 years ago

LOL u r right but seriously people r pervs and there is a reason CRIME tv and films and books r so popular and more grisly the better and hey what about DEXTER or Hannibal or all the other Hostel Saw torture porn shows eah? we love them !!! we love watching loons and freaks killing and eating and cooking and perfuming lol the innocents in this world.....why? We have no God? We have no Dogs? because we r all sick MOFOS? who knows?!!?? probably because we all are selfish munts and have small sadistic streaks in us which allow us to take pleasure in seeing 'bad' or 'dumb' or 'rude' or 'rich' or 'pretty' people get tortured and killed lol Messed up YES but WRONG? who knows now adays, its all gone to hell and thats where I suspect we are all heading but I hear they have cable and orgies 24/7 = EPIC!!! ;>
Personally I liked the film but half way through I realized there was no hero and did say to myself WTF this has gone sideways and escalated quickly and by the time of the murders and the orgy my head had exploded lol but I still recommend it to an intelligent person.

“What we have here is a failure to communicate”, Captain

[–] georget-1 11 years ago

It's a fairytale. And like Hansel and Gretl, the meaning of the story lies behind the tale of kids being baked by an evil witch. This is a great film in the same genre of Pan's Labryinth or Delicatessen. I love films like these where the directors warp reality into some fantasy tale.

[–] Linz_Belle 11 years ago

Realistic murder in movies??? What if they make a HORRible genre all about this realistic murder type movies? Oh the humanity!!! I hope the trend doesn't catch on.

[–] KingofSweden 11 years ago

I absolutely applaud you for standing up for your point of view, and I completely agree.

This movie was so utterly sickening, disgusting, reprehensible, that after a little while I had to scream STOP and turn it off. Its so cruel for the filmmakers to show us the relationship between Laura and Antoine, and how much she means to him, only to have her killed off. And for Jean to kill off those women and just dump their bodies like they're worthless trash makes me want to punch someone in the face.

This is a sick, perverse generation, who relishes in what is evil and disgusting and turns away from what is good. I complete agree that this movie is vile, and I will never watch it again.

The world looks to Sweden.

[–] reaseltbim 10 years ago

wait, so you are okay with watching something as dark and violent as American Horror story but this made you scared and shocked? is this a joke?
i find that pathetic. AHS is WAY worse than anything that we saw in this movie.
pathetic

[–] KingofSweden 10 years ago

These were both equally bad in terms of violent content but the reason I sat through it was to give it a CHANCE, since that's what you idiots always say to do.

Fail.

The world looks to Sweden. 

[–] reaseltbim 10 years ago

it is not just you,
this whole thread is of people saying how there pretty much scarred for life, I wonder what would happen if they saw something like Dexter or Hannibal. then I noticed you commented on the AHS threads and i had the BIGGEST facepalm in my life. i could not understand how you got so triggered by this but you could watch AHS without trouble.

AHS actually got me grossed out a couple of times, and i like horror in general.

[–] Korios 11 years ago

A film like Perfume, the extremely brutal french film Martyrs and films like Saw, Hannibal series and in general horror films are not necessarily meant to be enjoyed. They are meant to shock, have us think, frighten us etc. Enjoyment is secondary in their case. Why do you think you have to enjoy something for it to have value. Watch Martyrs and (if you recover from the shock) tell me if it was enjoyable. No it was not; it was meant to shock (actually shock like hitting us with a concrete pillar in the stomach), made us think about various stuff such as religious extremism, even contemplate the meaning of life and stuff like that. I did not enjoy this film, I was not entertained by it, but unlike most enjoyable and entertaining films I've seen I cannot seem to forget the shock I felt when watching it. The film was imprinted in my memory, so it certainly did its job.

Fanboy : a person who does not think while watching.

[–] reaseltbim 10 years ago

A film like Perfume, the extremely brutal french film Martyrs and films like Saw, Hannibal series

excuse me but, are you like, insane or something?
how on earth can you compare this to saw? wow lol. something tells me you couldn't handle something like the show Dexter,
if you felt shocked by this then dexter would put you in a coma or something lol "Beware, stay away!!!!!!!!"

[–] TongueFu 10 years ago

I couldn't make it past "geniously made".
Whatever that means.

[–] duckie_bb 10 years ago

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. How sick can you get and for what purpose then to make a story as sick as possible? Why not make the father become sexually attracted to the killer too, and to blow him on the spot, for added shock factor.

If you're interested, in the book the father was extremely sexually attracted to his daughter and he was envious of her future husband getting to lay with her lol he is grief stricken by his incestuous love for his daughter and the loss of his daughters dowry - land, money, a title - he was a huge social climber. He fled with his daughter to have her wed in an arranged marriage to secure the dowry.

The father never forgave his daughter's killer, the perfume momentarily made him believe he was in paradise, the perfume made him strongly love the killer that he tried adopting him as a son (in the book), that the killers actions were right and the killer was God-like. Probably why the killer, ‎Jean-Baptiste, name originated from Saint John the Baptist; ironic as it is false that Jean-Baptiste is holy and close to God - the perfume made people falsely believe you are in paradise, that the perfumer is of a higher power. Once the perfume wore off the father alike the people of Grasse went back to their usual selves - hatefully searching for a killer to make him pay.

The story is deep and meaningful but if you can only compliment the films (and not the dialogue) directing and cinematographics then its completely hopeless for you to even begin to understand the theme is the nature of humanity, hatred of humanity etc. and that the novel explores the irrationality of human behavior (Jean-Baptiste being able to produce strong reactions from people through scent). Jean-Baptiste lacking a scent or a soul meant he had no humanity, he couldn't feel love, he accepted slaving away in a toxic tannery that usually saw men die after a year - he didn't care. He lived in a mountain far away from civilization, at the end of a tunnel in a cave he couldn't sit up or lay straight in, crawled into a ball for 7 years (roughly), only emerging to eat bugs.

The story is a fantasy, it's not validating Jean-Baptiste's actions murdering the girls and it isn't a murderer's 'wet dream'. I'm surprised you didn't mention the dark humour in the film that sees everyone who comes into contact with Jean-Baptiste dying absurd deaths e.g. the woman who owned the orphanage, the tanner, Baldini, Drout.