"Perfumer" is a book that at first I didn't want to read out of principle - there was too much talk about it for it to be really worthwhile. But I went to the store, took it off the shelf, read the first page and... decided I wanted to read it after all!
From 1968-1974 Patrick Süskind studied medieval and modern history in Munich and Aix-en-Provence. In the '80s he worked as a screenwriter, for Kir Royal and Monaco Franze among others.
Zuskind turned out to be a master of smell...some writers can boast of the artistry of conveying sounds, colors, gestures, the comic... and Zuskind was a master of smell!
I loved this novel from beginning to end - it's a pity I read it after watching the movie in places.
I agree with the previous reviewer that the book leaves an aftertaste - I also thought I was sharper on smells...
But the overall assessment wants to argue. Especially about Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. In my opinion, this is a sharply negative character, and how else can you characterize a serial killer? Of course, someone may object and say in his defense that he had a hard fate, that his environment made him so cruel, and the lack of parental affection and care affected the fact that he sees nothing wrong in causing harm to other people, in murder. But in my opinion, neither a favorable environment nor the kindness of others would have changed him - anywhere, under any circumstances, he would have grown into exactly the same monster, because the signs of his inferiority were apparent from infancy (I am not talking about the absence of his own smell, of course).
I would also like to say a few words about the film.
I must say that the film adaptation does not accurately convey not only the author's text (which would be forgivable), but also distorts the idea. In the film, Grenouille, the genius of smell, is shown almost as a romantic hero, a kind of misunderstood talent with his eccentricities (killing is a very innocent pastime), who is not understood and not appreciated by overprivileged philistines. In the book, the "perfumer" is shown as a degenerate, a freak, even a bastard (as he, by the way, is repeatedly called by the author himself, at least in the Russian translation).
Watching the movie you sympathize with the hero, as much as it is possible to sympathize with a murderer, you believe that it was not he who was so bad, but the environment that made him so... The book makes an unambiguous assessment of everything that happens - Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is a mentally and morally flawed man. Although he is endowed with the gift of an incredible sense of smell, which, if you like, can be called a talent, but in the book Grenouille evokes only squeamishness, only indignation that THIS lives and, as they say, "blooms and smells".
urthermore, the director of the film simply blatantly twisted the end of the film in order to bring the final line of romanticization of Grenouille as well: as I remember, in the scene of the mass orgy the author says that Grenouille longed to join these people overflowing with love, to join their community, that he longed for love..... In the book, however, it says directly that when Grenouille saw that people had forgotten about him standing on the platform, he was overwhelmed, suffocated by hatred for them!..! Maybe this is already a nag, but after all, this scene is fundamental in understanding the whole work!
A very good book, the kind of book you want to forget so much that you want to read it all over again every time.
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