Perfume: Uniting the Senses
by BLC ©2006
Whatever happened to the art of film music? Can you name three composers for the screen in today’s Hollywood scene?
Sure, John Williams is still around, but when we think of him we think of ET or Star Wars or Schindler’s List and none of his music was ever reflective of the current “classical” music genre; indeed, he writes in a popular style that is hard not to like (though his music for Close Encounters of the Third Kind did strive to go further). But there once was a golden era when figures like Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith and Leonard Rosenman, not to mention the few distinctive contributions of Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, followed in the footsteps of Miklos Rozsa, Erich Korngold and Dmitri Tiomkin, figures who were closer to being household names than most concert composers of the time. (A lot of their music could actually be hummed or whistled by the guy in the street.) At the same time, the Europeans Walton, Vaughan Williams, Rota, Morricone, Theodorakis, Shostakovich and Prokofiev were bequeathing to us colossal scores for British, Italian, Greek and Soviet classic films. When such a name appeared on a screen credit it added stature to the film’s impact almost immediately.
The writer concedes that film-going has not been on his agenda, and so his impression will undoubtedly be challenged by cinema buffs who do go often and who care about what they hear as well as see. One hopes they would agree that the film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is one that breaks new ground in uniting the senses. The story centers around a character with a superhuman sense of smell, who sets about to create the ultimate scent, a love potion so powerful it causes people to drop their (ahem) inhibitions instantly. How can this be portrayed in a movie house reeking of nothing more seductive than what one snide reviewer called “eau de popcorn?” Director Tom Tykwer had no interest in refreshing, if you will, those early attempts at Smell-O-Vision or handing out “scent cards,” as the notorious John Waters once did. Tykwer addresses the aesthetic question by enhancing his images with lurid detail, coloring and magical use of light. And sound, too, was essential. He does not call in a composer willy-nilly. He collaborated to write the score and this music is a far cry from the galloping themes of Korngold or the sentimental tunes of Max Steiner and Alfred Newman. If anything, it evokes some of the sensation felt in hearing Herrmann’s final score for Taxi Driver, in which the composer left Citizen Kane and Alfred Hitchcock far behind in favor of uncompromising atonality. Interestingly, one critic likened the crazed loner Travis Bickle of Robert De Niro to Ben Whishaw’s Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the obsessed perfumer, who kills young virginal women to extract their essences, both characters being “terrifying geniuses.”
The film can be experienced on several levels. Most notable are its allegorical connotations. Symbolically, perfume is treated as if it has spirituality. Jean-Baptiste learns from the perfumer he apprentices (Dustin Hoffman) of the legend of an Egyptian tomb where a fragrance lingered that caused visitors to see paradise. And so the protagonist sets out on a messianic path—he is a baby born in something lower than poverty, i.e., muck and vermin, and a man who grows to shun materialism and earthly pleasures like normal sexual activity. In the climactic scene he stands atop a mount to deliver a sermon. The mount is a gallows, and the sermon is a wordless one, just the silent waving of a perfume-drenched handkerchief.
Tykwer must have been absolutely certain of the kinds of musical tones that would support his vision. The music ranges in register from the high-toned angelic vocal passages of a soprano to deep chords for low strings (what one reviewer called “spine-shivering drones of Dolby bass boom”), all of it largissimo , with an occasional uptempo passage in between. Tykwer and company are no doubt aware of the complexities as well as powers of today’s aural technology, and so they called in the best specialists to enrich the musical agenda. Two of the participants are, in fact, members of this publication’s staff, soprano Melanie Mitrano, credited with musical support, and composer Gene Pritsker, one of the musical orchestrators. Admittedly, their involvement was the nudge that moved us to see this film.
If this elaborate, expensive film somehow gains in stature—though, no Oscar nominations have been announced for it that we know about—one hopes that the careers of these two fine musical talents will be enhanced. But who can say when such a film involved literally a thousand contributors.