So just how bad was the smell of the 18th-century Paris market that movie director Tom Tykwer captures in its fetid glory?
This is not an unreasonable curiosity to harbor coming out of “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” which opened Friday in Denver.
The German director and his production crew – including the Dirt Unit – did an exacting job of rendering the birthplace of Jean- Baptiste Grenouille, the murderer and central character in Tykwer’s boldly crafted, persistently disturbing film.
With its charnel slop, its grimy purveyors hawking their goods as they stand in muck, well … hold your nose, cover your mouth and pray for the imminent arrival of modern sewer systems. If this be the agora, no wonder the phobia.
“It doesn’t smell as bad as it looks,” says Tykwer, 41. “All the stinking stuff is fake. Even the sweat is kind of faked.”
Movies, of course, do not smell. At least not that way. And this dilemma was always the steep challenge of bringing Patrick Suskind’s international best seller to the screen. Even more than Grenouille, scent is the protagonist of Suskind’s rich novel.
Tykwer, who wrote and directed 1998’s “Run Lola Run,” says it wasn’t the odd and lethal Grenouille he remembered long after first reading the book 20 years ago. “I was more impressed with how drastic and graphic the novel was in terms of its depiction of 18th-century street life,” he says. “So often it had been described through the lives of aristocracy and upper class. To get the pre- sewer-system world, which was basically a nightmare to live in, that was impressive. Of course, I was really impressed by the way the book was able to capture the world of smells and transport it into literary language.”
Working with editor Alex Berner and cinematographer Frank Griebe, Tykwer depicts the birth of Grenouille’s freakish sense of smell with bravura editing. As the newborn struggles for life beneath in his fishmonger mother’s stall, his snuffling nose gives way to a delirious collection of images.
John Hurt’s narration adds to the mythic quality of the prodigy’s arrival. (Hurt, who lent his dulcet tones to the misanthropic beauty “Dog- ville,” is the go-to narrator for adult fables.) Later, when the lonesome boy begins to put nouns to scents, a fluid montage of rock, pond, frog and tree personifies the depths of his discoveries. These are standout moments in the film.
No doubt one of the reasons it’s taken two decades for “Perfume” to waft into theaters is how visually elusive its aromatic star can be.
But producer Bernd Eichinger, who pursued the rights, also contended with Suskind’s resistance. Finally, Eichinger has said, he “sensed that something had changed in Patrick’s attachment to the novel.” That was 15 years after publication.
While Eichinger waited for the author’s paternal grip to slacken, Tykwer had to be mindful of another group prone to protectiveness: readers.
“Not only was it the biggest-selling German novel ever, it was a worldwide phenomenon,” says the filmmaker. “People have a very deep and emotional relationship to it. They consider it to be part of their biography. They read it again and again and again over the years.
“There are lots of best sellers that people read because they’re page-turners you can consume and forget about. It isn’t like that.”
So Tykwer had to deliver something that grasped how readers experienced the novel.
“But at the same time, what everybody expects from the film version of a novel is a subjective take,” he says. “You want an individual perspective on it. To balance that was quite demanding.”
How demanding? Consider that pungent marketplace where Grenouille was born. For the director it wasn’t the faux animal odors or faked human sweat that lingered long after the shoot.
“The only sweat that was real was the sweat of the crew that was working so hard. That was kind of intense, that smell,” Tykwer says with a laughs. “It was so tough to make the movie. It was a physically demanding experience. The smell of the stress of it is what I remember most.”
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
