December 14, 2008
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I wonder how you spend your Sunday.
I got up at five a.m. the same as my usual weekdays. Put a DVD in and practiced tango. Yeah, with a stick just like Richard Gere in Shall We Dance. First with the walk T. A. N. GO and then with promenade and cortes and the rock. My living room is tiny but I have a larger space in the basement. Just basic steps. You can learn and practice tango for a long time because there are so many steps and so many variations. It is a beautiful dance, so sensous and artistic. I can watch tango and never get tired of. It only increases my desire to learn. After tango I practiced chacha. Just doing some fast chacha instead of walking because it is quite cold this morning, around 20oF (equivalent to –6.7oC). In the afternoon as I ironed my clothes I watched a very strange but very mind captivating movie “Perfume: the story of a murderer.”
Jean Baptist Grenouille was born in a fish market. His mother was so poor that she tried to dump him and because of that act she was hung. He was raised in an orphanage. Growing up he found out that he got a gift of scent. He could detect many scents. He could memorize a scent and he was mesmerized by scents. Going to the market one day he followed the scent of a young female plum peddler. She was threatened by his weird behavior and in trying to stop her from screaming he choked her to death. As she is dying, he detected her scent of virginal soul escaping from her body and became obsessed with that scent.
With his olfactory gift he became an assistant for a famous perfumer (played by Dustin Hoffman) and with him he learned how to distilled essence of flower to extract perfume. His master unwittingly confirmed his belief that people’s scents are their souls. With his obsession with the fragrance of the plum salegirl, he started his killing spree. His victims are all young female virgins. He extracted their scents by wrapping their hair and body with animal fat and distilled the fat to extract their essence. He then created a powerful fragrance that just a whip of the fragrance all people became ecstasic with the power of love. They found love, felt love, made love and they were happy beyond any measures. Even people who sentenced him to death for his crime mistook him for angel with that whip of his design fragrance. But even with the power larger than wealth, or love, or death, he still could not find love or be able to love himself. All the time he was obsessed by the plum salegirl whom he accidentally killed hence robbed her sublime beauty that was her essence. He poured on himself all the remaining powerful potion that he created from the fragrance of all virgin souls, the crowd in the fish market where he was born was affected by the potion they practically devoured him.
The film was good in the sense that it totally captured your attention but it was bad that it filled with gruesome images of murderous acts. It was very strange in the way it combined beautiful things such as young and pretty women, beautiful flowers, and fragrance with such evil thoughts and actions. I just could not accept the idea of from such evil acts that distilled such beautiful and powerful fragrance that could bing ecstasy of love to mankind. It is such an illogical logic, however, such out of the box thinking can be seen as great creativity.
Comments (8)
once in awhile, I dance at the Vietnamese concert. Tango is hard. I am a horrible dancer so I never master the steps of tango.
Will you be my dance partner?
Em la` Tu`ng ne`.
Huy vo.ng Chi. co`n nho+’ dde’n Em. 
@tt_love2007 - Of course I know you. You look very pretty in ao dai.
I am a terrible dancer too -.- I got two left feet.
Thank you for the review. Your last statement is very insightful. It’s like the artist who uses his experiences, some of which may be negative or evil, to produce such artistic beauty. I can see the character with the gift of scent being a metaphor for the horrible that winds up becoming/creating something good. I hope that makes sense. You definitely make me want to see this movie. Thank you, again.
I read the novel and enjoyed it but couldn’t really “love” it all felt very foreign.
@SilverNeptune31 - I think the book was translated from German. Thanks for comment.
I have never heard of this movie. It sounds very interesting, and indeed paradoxical – finding the pure and beautiful fragrance by killing. Did he regret killing the girl in the first place? It doesn’t seem so since he continues doing it.
For me, I woke up this morning and read a book I bought yesterday, The Christmas Shoes. I heard of the song for the first time this past week and happened to see the book at the bookstore yesterday. So I read, and I cried like a baby. My eyes still hurt.
my daughter loved the movie- i on the other hand can not watch violence. i am a g rated heart. violence makes me miserable. i watched horrible g rated tv movies on sunday… have a cold that is definately bronchitis and may be pneumonia- have to go to Drs. today. the weather here was -37c with windchill on saturday and -28c sunday though I am not sure what it was with the wind factored into it. a beautifully written review- also a great description of your dance partner and practice.