The most obvious and profound change in Tom Tykwer’s filmic adaptation of Patrick Suskind’s Perfume is the humanization of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Together with other modifications on the protagonist, the film director’s subjective view forms a kind of dialogue with Suskind’s original novel, which offers both readers of the novel and spectators of the film very rich and subtle text to marvel at, to indulge in and to lose oneself. Tykwer’s adaptation fulfills my expectation, I must say. Though initially I thought it’s an impossible task to transfer magic words on olfactory capability of Jean-Baptiste into a motion picture.
To see how Tykwer’s film interacts with the original novel, one must go back to the original novel and do some textual analysis. Someone once said that a critique without textual analysis is equivalent to treason, I can’t agree more. The text I will refer to is the Penguin Red Classic 2006 issue, translated by John E. Woods.
The first obvious difference one might notice lies in the death of the girl with plums. The killing scene in the novel is quite sketchy, without too much dwelling on Jean-Baptiste’s emotion:
‘She was so frozen with terror at the sight of him that he had plenty of time to put his hands to her throat. She did not attempt to cry out, did not budge, did not make the least motion to defend herself. He in turn, did not look at her, did not see her delicate, freckled face, her red lips, her large sparkling green eyes, keeping his eyes closed tight as he strangled her, for he had only one concern – not the lose the least trace of her scent.’ (p49-50)
Before that, Suskind meticulously depicts the scent from this virgin girl with plums as the pure beauty, which represents‘the higher principle, and the pattern by which the others must be ordered’. Although Jean-Baptiste’s attraction to her is solely by her scent, and nothing is more than that, one simple word ‘strangle’ still seems not enough to convey how such a pure beauty can be killed so neatly. In fact, the depiction of the killing in the novel seems to presuppose Jean-Baptiste as a cold-blooded monster, whose aim is only to capture the enthralling pure beauty of the girl.
In the film however, Jean-Baptisite’s killing seems to be an incident. Interestingly, before he kills the girl, they have met once in the street. This episode is the addition to the original novel. Sensing someone is following her, the girl turns her back, and even offers two plums to Jean-Baptiste. Here, Tykwer’s depiction of the pure beauty of the girl is enhanced by a female vocal choir with a celestial touch, as if the scent from the girl is not from the filthy and noisy world that Jean-Baptiste lives in but from heaven. The fatal attraction that draws Jean-Baptiste to her home causes her death, yet it is unintentionally accomplished. Contrary to the novel, Jean-Baptiste’s innocence remains intact at that moment. I think such a humanized change has created a myth, in which Jean-Baptiste becomes a demon embodied in a human-being. The clear-cut impression one would have about Jean-Baptiste in the novel is blurred by Jean-Baptiste’s strong emotion after he realizes he incidentally kills the girl.
Comparing to the simple, and rather chilling, depiction of the first killing in the novel, the modification on Jean-Baptiste in the film greatly enriches the character. The psychological space left for the spectator to speculate is expanded, which makes the protagonist more sophisticated. Ben Wishaw’s performance conveys wonderfully such a complex figure. I think Tykwer’s film identifies the weakest link in the narrative of the original novel. Such imperfection is not easy to detect, since my first reading of the novel was overshadowed by the labyrinth of scent created by Suskind’s magic words.
The filmic adaptation follows three phases structure of the original novel; that is, the development of the self, the revelation of the self, and the sacrifice of the self. In the first phase, the moment Jean-Baptiste is touched by the beauty of the girl is the turning point in his life. Tykwer’s humanized touch to Jean-Baptiste in this phase elevates the development of his olfactory capability into a kind of aesthetic enlightenment. The fragrance of the virgin girl represents the pure and absolute beauty that every artist strives for. Once Jean-Baptiste senses it, he realizes that capturing such a beauty is the meaning of his life. However, the incident of the girl’s death reveals another side of such a pursuit; that is, the encounter of the death. In fact, one might say Jean Baptiste’s search for the absolute beauty of scent is driven by the spectre of the girl. Such a theme of the Freudian death drive holds the key to understand the fantasy created by Suskind. It underlies the statement that an artist’s pursuit of the absolute beauty is equivalent to the embrace of the Thanato, and the alienating impact would transfer a human being into an evil. This fundamental issue of continental aesthetics is the hard kernel of the original novel, but it is discretely embedded in all sorts of lengthy depiction of olfactory experiences. If one discards all these beautiful words, one might find the character of Jean-Baptiste is quite limpid.
Suskind's very presupposition of Jean-Baptiste as a naturally born monster makes this character a bit flat, exactly because it lacks a kind of movement in his evolvement from a human being to a satanic being. The very act of killing the first virgin girl in the novel signifies such a presupposition. The lengthy and powerful descriptions of all his smelling experiences cannot hide such a flaw, which can not be easily located in the odor-saturated world created by Suskind.
With the help of some bits of aerial choirs, Tykwer’s color contrast on the screen conveys well the feeling of scent elaborated by Suskind’s words. The dirty filthy Jean-Baptiste with extraordinary smelling talent is uplifted by the magic power of the scent emitted by the pure white virgin. The enlightening moment implements an aesthetic seed into Jean-Baptiste’s mind; since then he starts the journey of the real creation – the process he struggles to capture the fragile absolute.
The encounter with the girl hereafter repeats three times in the filmic narrative. All of them are in the dream, and each time the dream scene is slightly different from the real one. Retrospectively, one might find that the appearance of three dreams coincides with three phases of Jean-Baptiste’s life. The first dream occurs after he becomes a protégée of perfumer Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman). Since the real encounter with the virgin girl and the scent of her beauty imparts the aesthetic sensibility into him, the first dream seems to be a first wet dream in Jean-Baptiste's youth. It's not difficult to tell the pleasure it brings to him. However, such an encounter also drives him to the destructive journey of himself.
The second dream finds him when he retreats into a cave and falls into a state of pure solitude. Suskind’s depiction of the discovery of his odorlessness - the revelation of the self, though is not the same as the film, is succinct enough. The tempo of the narrative is carefully and tightly controlled. From the catastrophe that happens ‘in a dream while he slept in the heart of his fantasies to the final walk-out of the cave that he has dwelled for 7 years, the emotion of Jean-Baptiste has undergone fear, doubt, disappoint and despair. Tykwer’s film skips completely the errand part of the fluidum letale in the original novel. In stead, the protagonist is in the state of despair until he catches the scent of Laura. In the words of the narrator, ‘God has last begun to smile at him’.
Although the filmic depiction of the second dream is different from the novel, its message is the same – the revelation of the inhuman Thing that parasites in a human body. The cave functions as a vehicle for Jean-Baptiste to know himself, while the dream holds the key to start the vehicle. Exactly at that moment, the perspective of the film narrative starts to shift from the aesthetics of the scent to the religion of the scent. Therefore, the following killing scenes all become sketchy as what matters are the making of the ingredients for the perfume par excellence. The film depicts well enough how each victim vanishes into a drop of oil. Isn’t this drop of life essence the objet-petit-a in the Lacanian sense? And by mixing 13 of them, a smart change in the film to illustrate how the head chords, heart chords, and base chords are composed into a holy omnipotent perfume, Jean-Baptiste is equipped with the power to turn the world upside down.
The farce of the bacchanal scene is subversive and its making surely will have a mark in the history of world film. The camera movement is so lucid and powerful that it breaks up the transparency of the narrative. Such a subjective treatment has a cooling de-sublimating effect on the ecstasy state of people which is extremely difficult contain on the screen. Technique speaking, the magic camera movement in Tykwer's film, if not exceeds, at least matches the words by Suskind.
‘The people were now pure liquid, their spirits and minds were melted; nothing was left but an amorphous fluid, and all they could feel was their hearts floating and sloshing about within them, and they laid those hearts, each man, each woman, in the hands of the little man in the blue frock coat, for better or worse. They loved him.’ (p274)
In the film, such a magic power is conveyed through a wave of golden light. Everyone seeing the light would be enlightened and touched by it, even the bishop falls into its prey. Here, Tykwer’s film once again shows its difference from the novel. The reaction of Jean-Baptiste to the orgy is full of hatred and disgust in the novel, while it is more sophisticated in the film. The third occurrence of the dream in the film brings Jean-Baptiste to the final consummation with the plum girl, as if the perfume unleashes the ultimate gratification of his desire. It commands the total submission of any human being, just like at the presence of Almighty Thing. The close-up of Jean-Baptiste’s face with tear drops is resonant to the one with amazement brought by the sense of beauty when he firstly encounters the plum girl in the street of Paris. Tykwer’s skill is mastery; the regression to the sexual fulfillment in the third dream however is problematic as it signifies the fall of Jean-Baptiste, which leads him into the third phase – the destruction of the self.
From the above-mentioned perspective, Tykwer’s filmic adaptation can also be viewed as a critique to the original novel. He obviously disagrees with Suskind’s two-dimensional treatment of Jean-Baptiste, which lacks sufficient emotion of a human being. The changes in the filmic narrative have identified the blind spots of Suskind’s subjective overture on this character, crystallizing the excessiveness of its author.
From any aspects of film making, Perfume does not fail to deliver. In fact, reading the original novel accompanied with watching the film is a feast to one’s mind, as well as visual and auditory senses.
The narrative structure is a delicate and perfect model for anyone who seeks to understand how aesthetic experience works in one life. The lasting subjects such as death and sublimation, creation ex nihilo, the meaning of love, and religious experience have all been skillfully woven into the narrative. There is a strong sentiment in the narrative that the real talented people deserve respect and well-being, and those who don’t follow this mandate would be punished. Suskind is a moralist, since all those who disrespect Jean-Baptiste’s talent and mistreat him would die miserably one way or another. But the law in charge of their lives is the law of Suskind’s own, so it also creates an illusion of absolute free will which is embodied by Jean-Baptiste. Although the protagonist is constantly in a miserable state, he is a perfect autonomous subject. Isn’t such a creature the ideal embodiment of liberty? Herein lies the reason that both the novel and the film have such a strong appealing sense, even though the protagonist is a horrible murderer. Lacan once called such a subject as an ex-timacy; it is so intimate to us and it fulfills our fantasy yet it’s completely alien to us.
The narrative of Perfume creates an anamorphosis through which one can see the real face of Love – the one with the capital ‘L’ that has been used in the end of the novel.
‘When they finally did dare it, at first with stolen glances and then candid ones, they had to smile. They were uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love.’ (p296)
Such reading might be labored as reductionism, but only with this hard kernel in mind, one's fantasy of a perfect perfume might not be traversed. Reading Perfume is like eating a puffer, the extraordinary delicious taste can only be savored while one realizes how intoxicating the little creature is.
