Perfume: The Story of a Murderer: (Tom
Tykwer/Johnny Klimek/Reinhold Heil) Performing well in Europe but
failing to attract audiences in America, writer and director Tom
Tykwer's bizarre 2006 tale of murderous perfume production brought
cinematic life to a popular German novel. In the 18th Century, an
orphaned Parisian boy discovers his unusually refined sense of smell and
eventually becomes obsessed with scents as a young man. A genius at his
craft of distilling perfumes, this man kills women to literally produce
scents out of them, his plight leaving a wake of deaths until his
ultimate success leads to his destruction at the hands of a crowd so
obsessed with his creation that they cannot restrain themselves from
literally consuming him. While there are interesting olfactory concepts
explored in
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, and performances by
Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman are engaging as always, the movie was
met with critical derision aimed mostly at the screenplay. For viewers
not in tune with their own noses, the entire premise of the movie seemed
foreign and incomprehensible, especially once whole villages come to
worship a single man in displays of mass hysteria because of a few drops
of a perfume. One artistic issue facing Tykwer is the problem that
movies don't have a "scratch & sniff" component to them. His answer was
to convey peoples' intoxication by perfumes via the score of the film.
Tykwer, along with collaborators Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil (who
together formed the group "Pale 3"), supplied music for the director's
own movies, often in unconventional manners. For
Perfume: The Story
of a Murderer, Tykwer start writing music for the concept over the
same three years he was working on the screenplay, his melodic
inclinations helping to guide aspects of the plot. He recorded some of
his themes with a small orchestra to play them for the crew on set as a
mood-setter, later utilizing these pieces as temp music during
post-production. He hired the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by the
esteemed Simon Rattle for the orchestral portions, but the significant
choral element better representing olfactory concepts is handled by a
large Latvian choir and soprano soloists.
A particularly interesting intersection between the
distilling of perfumes and the structure of music is conveyed by
Hoffman's character, Giuseppe Baldini, in
Perfume: The Story of a
Murderer. He teaches the young genius that all perfumes are like
music and should be built upon three chords of four notes each, and
those three chords consist of a head (the musical style), heart (the
melody), and bass (the lasting impression). On top of that, he argues
that Egyptians believed a thirteenth note was necessary for a truly
transcendent scent. The biggest question for the movie's score,
therefore, is whether or not Tykwer made any legitimate attempt to
emulate these note and chord formations. While several of the melodies
in the work do involve three, four, and six-note phrases in repetition
that could have been constructed to suggest twelve notes, the composers
don't make any such use overly obvious. Given the philosophical point of
the connection between music and scent, perhaps such a task was
impossible to make easily digestible. For instance, the six-note
phrasing starting at 2:16 into "Meeting Laura" does repeat in duos a few
times before resolving to a single note of epiphany at 3:01 that may
suggest the elusive thirteenth note. While this technique jives with the
Laura character's role in the plot, will many listeners really make that
connection consciously or subconsciously? The thematic tapestry in
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer has a wealth of potential that
is largely squandered by the trio of composers as they lose focus and
explore too many variations for the narrative to really thrive. Instead,
this music is an exercise in pure style, infusing quasi-religious choral
tones and orchestral pomposity to sculpt a deviant and more
classically-inclined variation of Trevor Jones' similarly conceived
From Hell several years earlier. But the calling card of the
music for
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is its tendency to
bloat simplistic musical structures to extreme degrees. It's a very
ostentatious score, overblown often and without remorse. Even how Tykwer
talked about the work in interviews at the time reveals that he used
many words to say essentially nothing. It was all linguistic window
dressing.
While the score for
Perfume: The Story of a
Murderer surely sounds magnificent at times, it's not exactly a work
of art. The constant repetition of phrasing in the themes becomes
tiresome, and the composers rely too heavily on shifts between the major
and minor keys to denote the balance between the attraction of the
scents and the murders required to manufacture them. There are also
times when Tykwer's team clearly expose their inspiration from the works
of Danny Elfman, Craig Armstrong, and John Barry. The composers also
have a tendency to apply percussion and electronics like sound effects
in the mix, trying to pinpoint an artsy reference but ultimately simply
distracting like rear channel artifacts in music that has been ripped
directly from a film. This application is particularly aggravating in
the otherwise seductive "Streets of Paris," which persists with such
effects even after the orchestra is finished. The heartbeat addition to
"Grenouille's Childhood" also induces an eye roll. Like its alternation
of major and minor keys, Tykwer does the same with the tonalities,
moving back forth with his harmonies in ways that are not always
pleasant. For some listeners, this general style will mesmerize just as
much as the perfect scent, but for those looking to make practical sense
of it all, there is frustration to be found in the themes. There are
seven recurring themes in
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, but
none is applied as a dominant identity in which to wrap the entire
story. The closest thing is Tykwer's mystery and tragedy theme, the
typically choral emulation of Howard Shore's
The Lord of the
Rings mysticism in its repeated phrases that shift concluding chords
immediately in "Prologue, The Highest Point." This theme of mystery is
engrained in parts of "Grenouille's Childhood," often fragmentary until
it consolidates at 3:50 and is joined by childlike innocence and dark
choir and thumping. The idea dominates "Moorish Scents" on oboe,
shifting to strings and flute tentatively and sparsely in most
instances. It is very slightly teased by the soprano late in "The Method
Works!," meanders in the background midway through "Richis' Escape,"
closes the last passages of "Perfume, Distilled" in equal morbid and
lofty styles, and occupies all of "Epilogue, Leaving Grasse" in its
original choral shades.
The second theme in
Perfume: The Story of a
Murderer is the perfume and intoxication theme, Tykwer's identity
for swooning, embracing, and ultimately ravenous crowds in the story.
Its nearly identical treble phrases with shifting chords underneath
emulate simple John Barry fashion and is highly attractive when openly
tonal. It's lavish at 0:38 into "Streets of Paris" despite annoyingly
repeating too many times in similar and obnoxious renditions; an
interlude at 2:05 is a shorter variant of the same thing, and it's an
overdue relief. This theme returns at the end of the picture, building
to a thunderous statement in the middle of "The Perfume" at a much
slower tempo and gains momentum and clarity from choral shades
throughout the choral-only "The Crowd Embrace," the interlude sequence
reprised at 1:47. Related but distinct for the composers is a third,
romantic theme in the work. Consisting of four-note phrases repeated
with the last note and underlying chord changing, this idea's final
phrase inverts the formation for a sense of resolution, and a notable
interlude offers more hopeful, rising structures. The romance theme is
heard at 0:09 into "The Girl with the Plums" on a boy soprano voice
before the full orchestra presents it in extremely lush tones at 0:59.
The theme's interlude sequence follows at 2:02 into "The Girl with the
Plums" and turns dark and twisted on bass strings and chimes in the
middle of the cue. The theme is forced into a new direction in "Lost
Love" much later, with the first three notes informing new idea. A bit
brighter in inflection is Tykwer's fourth theme, that of distilling. Its
rising and falling structures are elusive in "Distilling Roses," plucked
violins and celeste carrying the softer personality. The melodically is
reconstructed in even the cheerier "The 13th Essence" but does not
return in "The Method Works!" Its figures inform the urgency of
"Awaiting Execution," and the full theme opens "Perfume, Distilled" on
piano and plucked violins in something of a reprise of "Distilling
Roses." The composers don't do tremendous justice to the Laura character
outside of the possible intentionality of the twelve-note sequences
followed by a sole, thirteenth note to connect with the story. While the
character proves to be the doomed lynchpin of the entire endeavor for
the main character, Tykwer doesn't emphasize her theme as revelatory in
the larger scheme of things.
The material for Laura is rooted heavily on key in very
simplistic formations, only opening its lines in later renditions.
Alternating whimsically between major and minor chords, this idea
defines all of "Meeting Laura," returns against a more ominous
percussive rhythm in "Laura's Murder," and barely supplies its chords to
"The Perfume." A sixth theme in
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
represents the evil behind the creation of the ultimate scent. Its
anxious minor third alternations from key open "Streets of Paris"
briefly and are plucked in the latter half of "The 13th Essence." More
prominent is the seventh theme in the score, one for escape and victory
that employs chord progressions that owe much to Craig Armstrong's
techniques. This striking motif opens of "Richis' Escape" and becomes
more flamboyant at 2:24 into "Perfume, Distilled." There are,
maddeningly, some moments of unique melodic exploration in the score,
too, and none is more potent than the crashing extension of evil motif
in "Grasse in Panic." This ambitious action cue offers fantastic depth
to the ensemble when considering the flutes and xylophone on top of the
frantic, nearly gothic movements below. Listeners will have difficulty
not thinking of Danny Elfman's
Sleepy Hollow during this cue,
which concludes with some chuckle-inducing, over-the-top pipe organ
figures. This cue's adept soundscape highlights one of the best
attributes of
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer: its remarkable
sound quality. The recording of the orchestral and choral elements
sounds fantastic, maximizing good performances across the board. Because
of the impressively crisp and expansive soundscape, some listeners will
forgive Tyker and his team's somewhat wayward thematic base. If you can
allow yourself to become enveloped in the classically pretentious milieu
of the work, then you could consider the score among the best of its
year. The primary album release is somewhat out of film order and
missing a fair amount of material, including a bonus cue, "Experiment,"
that purchasers of the album could download from the label's website in
2007 if their Adobe Flash Player was cooperating with them. (Usually, it
wasn't.) A promotional album aimed at awards voters filled in the
blanks, but much of this material wasn't particularly interesting. The
long cue "I Enjoy My Work," for instance, is little more than one
arduous, boring crescendo. In the end,
Perfume: The Story of a
Murderer might smell great if music had such capabilities, but
beware an allergic reaction to its potency.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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The insert includes notes about the score and film in three languages.
