MovieChat Forums > Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2007) Discussion > Compared to the Book

Compared to the Book

posted 9 years ago by belacane
3 replies | jump to latest

I've just peeked through all the thread titles and didn't see anything addressing this. The book is one of my top 10 books ever, and I reread it sparingly, in order to keep it interesting and enjoy its unusual nature. I'm about due for a reread (it's been about 5-6 years since I read it).

My question is not so much "how well does the movie adhere to the book" (because I'm pretty sure it doesn't, based on online commentary in general) but "how well does the movie retain the flavor of the book"? I just saw SPECTRE and wanted to see Ben Whishaw in more things, and because I love this book, decided to start investigating the movie.

Thoughts? I can say right now that Whishaw is too good-looking to be the Grenouille in my mind, though maybe they downplayed that in the movie. :-)

[–] wizard003 9 years ago

He is also much to nice. He comes aling like a pure boy, not the evil animal he is in the books. In the books he isn't hunan, more a minster without any sense of mercy, not interesstet in anything rrffering to the human side. Here he is even in love with the first girl....the other characters are also to nirmal und friendly. The film doesn't bring over rhe feeling of the book

[–] mmmarianne 9 years ago

The book is amazing and pretty much impossible to turn (perfectly) into a movie. Everytime a particular smell is described you can almost feel it, that's something hard to do.

Yeah, Whishaw is really good looking. I've seen the movie before reading the book, so the actual description of Grenouille got me like "ok wtf" hahaha. Also, I think the movie makers tried to make Grenouille more "human", with the whole thing about him realizing "he couldn't be loved". Nah, he's a psycho.

[–] taran-rod 9 years ago

"start investigating the movie." Are you *beep* kidding me?? Just *beep* watch it and stop asking stupid questions...