Perfume
Smells are invisible. Smells are silent. Smells are magical.
Close your eyes and try to recollect the last time you smelt the aroma of warm bhajji and tea wafting from Tarams. Now recollect how that special someone smelt the first time you met them. One will find that our recollections of the smells are limited and vague, but the way those fragrances titillated all our other senses (especially taste, touch and colour) are easy to remember and recollect. There is something inherently mysterious and synaesthesiac about smells which Modern science still can't explain.
The beauty, horror and divinity of our most mysterious sense has been captured by Peter Süskind in his international bestseller Perfume. Set in 18th century France, Perfume relates the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, "one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages".
When Grenouille's abandoned body is found in the garbage, he is taken to an orphanage, where everyone who comes into contact with him finds something about him to be repulsive. What they are unaware of is that Grenouille's body does not have any aroma, a distinction which is so subtle that nobody can place their finger on it, but which colours Grenouille's entire life. Grenouille's strange relationship to odours is further highlighted by his own extremely sharp sense of smell, caused, perhaps, by the lack of necessity to sense past his own smell.
When he comes of age, Grenouille manages to apprentice himself to a perfumer and shows a strong aptitude for mixing strange and exotic perfumes. This skill leads him to his desire to cover his own lack of smell and a quest to create the most unique perfume the world has ever known- the essence of love and beauty. In this process, Grenouille murders 25 virgins, all at their peak of their beauty and youth to create the most divine essence the world has ever known.
By following Grenouille from his birth, when his mother abandoned him to death among the discarded fish guts, through his childhood when he discovered how different he was in his apprenticeship, Süskind is able to evoke several different emotions from the reader, ranging from sympathy for the young orphan to curiosity to disgust and hatred. Grenouille's lack of aroma can be seen as representative of his lack of morals in a world in which the amoral and the ethical were struggling to find a new common ground.
Süskind does a remarkable job in portraying Paris of the eighteenth century, relying more on olfactory descriptions than is common in most novels, which supports the rather odd conceit behind the narrative. He describes Grenouille and his actions with a detached demeanour, thereby heightening the horrific nature of Grenouille's actions by not commenting on that nature.
Perfume is a suspense novel. Although the reader knows that Grenouille is guilty, throughout the book the reader wonders whether and how Grenouille will be brought to justice. I have kept spoilers in this review to a minimum as the climax of the book will shock everyone. The magic of the book lies in how the author is able to convince us into sympathising with his dark anti-hero till the very end.
Süskind's book is sui generis. Part horror, part mystery, part historical fiction, it offers insight into the mind of the criminally insane while speculating on the role the sense of smell plays in our lives. Perfume can't be compared to anything written before it because its premise is so different than what has come before, in so many ways.
If not, watch the movie.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (German Das Parfüm – Die Geschichte eines Mörders, 2006) is originally a German film directed by Tom Tykwer, an adaptation of Perfume by Patrick Süskind, starring Ben Whishaw, Alan Rickman and Dustin Hoffman. Ben Whishaw is cast as Grenouille and delivers a master-class performance as the demented genius. Tom Twyker, better known as director of Run Lola Run weaves a synaesthesiatic web of colours, sounds and textures which act as a medium for us to smell and feel the fragrances and odours Grenouille encounters. He uses lighting and colours palettes to mimic the moods smells induce in us. For example the city of Paris is dark, gloomy and damp whereas the perfume city of Grasse is bright and sunny. Grenouille's first encounter with Laura, the epitome of his scent of love is a scene of pure beauty as Twyker manages to capture how Grenouille smells out the world's most beautiful woman. The climax of the movie is also a scene for the ages, and just like the book; will send the audience into a surreal trance. The movie is not for the faint of heart and is very lucid and graphic in its imagery.
Nevertheless I highly recommend everyone to stop watching whatever they are watching and download Perfume off DC and watch it because this movie makes one smell with their eyes and ears, while telling a brilliant story all along.
