Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
The movie is as good as the book, and this time I will start with the transposition into the big screen. The director is a superb Tom Tykwer, whose name says little to nothing to many, but if you want to know some of his other works, probably Babylon Berlin, the fantastic series in the German capital of the 20s. Absolutely amazing and you can find much of him in both movie. The locations, the atmospheres are part of the plot as much as the story.
The movie Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (IMDB) says it all in the title. It's a fictitious absolutely plausible story of a man, a murderer. He grows up with an extremely sensitive sense of smell and he is so obsessed to create the perfect perfume that his mind twists to genius madness, or mad genius.
Like the book, it has to rely immensely into grabbing the viewer into imaging scents, craving for them, feeling the sensation and being transported in the madness of 'smell drunkenness'.
The achievement is majestic, because even thought you can't smell a thing, you feel them all. The director uses the colours, the atmosphere, the music and indeed the directing sequence to try to make you experience something tech can't give you.
Watch it because it is worthy and follow quite faithfully the book.
One note. Both of us had watched it already when in Tangier we switched on the TV one night. The movie was ending. Unfortunately it was censored.
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