When "being focused" is taken to the extreme...

".... you forget to return to the real world."

I finished watching "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" from the BBC Iplayer tonight. This is not a new movie. It was shown in 2006. It's a different sort of Thriller movie, as you would expect with blood, murder and dead bodies. However, I like the story telling. It is stylish and it also subtly touched on the human side. I cannot help but develop empathy for the movie's main character, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille played by Ben Whishaw. because of his rough upbringing and how he survived in tough situations. He has a gifted sense of smell, which in the end motivated him to invent the most uniquely formatted perfume, and even to the extent of extracting and formatting perfume from unique human body odour, which means he needs to possess the whole body and how it leads to him going a step further.

It is rarely that movie relate human killing in this way. It is stylish because like all movies on human killing, which treats murder as a mean to an end, this movie shows the character's need for a unique smell, something that viewers can relate to. It is not like you kill human body part because you like to torture or you enjoy bloody gore. In a way, while the killing is brutal, the story telling was good. It is just a classic case of "being focused" is taken to the extreme, which develop quite naturally following the upbringing of this main character. You thought of him being nearly abandoned by his mother as soon as he was borne, and how he sold from one trader to another as slave, you almost forget this boy needs to find something he can identify or belong to. In fact, he has nothing, not even the slightest sense of freedom. That gift of smell in him saves him. He went after that, chased after it at all costs to pursue it. You just feel heartbroken at the look of Ben Whishaw in his portray of the character, showing much of the vulnerability and innocence, feeling all sorry for his destiny.

Dustin Hoffman who played the washed up perfumer, Giuseppe Baldini and who bought Ben Whishaw over from his master, taught the latter technique on perfume making. He told Ben Whishaw, "Talent is next to nothing, while experience, acquired in humanity and hard work, means everything". However, the obsession of the gifted sense of smell in Ben Whishaw drives him to the extreme to pursue further in finding the unique odour. As brutal and cruel as he may seem, he has tears in his eyes, when he realized how he accidentally put a young woman to death all because he wanted to possess her because of her odour. Unfortunately, his obsession has taken him so far that he just could not bring himself to love and be loved like most could. I just wonder how many of us are just the way like this, never mind if you are a murderer, as long as you let your secret obsession took over and when it went a little one step too far.