THE HUNT FOR THE THIRTEENTH CHORD : 

THE PERFECT SCENT AND THE HOMICIDAL QUEST IN TOM TYKWER’S MOVIE ‘PERFUME’

ABSTRACT : Nourished in the realms of medieval romances and threatening mysteries, Gothic horror stories have more or less tickled pink the audience through its strategic polarity in the forefront of fabricating horror. It turns all the more wild and exotic when the gothic attributes can closely expound its contours through an olfactory genius in the pursuit of a thirteenth chord to create the perfect scent. Patrick Suskind’s novel “The Perfume” (1985) stretches its tincture as it gets revamped to the visual fiesta designed by Tom Tykwer through the 2006 movie “Perfume-The Story of A Murderer”. Jean Baptiste Grenouille, an orphan, deserted in a fish-market gradually ascertains his own power in possessing a superhuman sense of smell which eventually triggers him to chisel out the unparalleled - blissful scent of the world. His aspiration pulls him to the homicidal turn, carving the murderer out of him in its fullest form packed to the gunwales. The paper tries to explore the psyche of the protagonist along with the gothic traits mirrored within the French scenario.The chutzpah of a derelict who is abandoned and the stupendous olfactory sense that he is blessed with, turns instrumental in egging a plethora of events. The paper focuses on the mysterious curse attached with the principal character along with his bizarre hunt to discover the thirteenth chord. This paper foregrounds the historical context of horror in accordance with the Gothic elements and my findings break from the ideologies that dominate the Gothic background through a contrasting perspective arising out of the super-sense to smell. The mysteries of the numbers and the ill omen that the protagonist retains with him, links the threads to the final line of gothic elements.

“He still had enough perfume left to enslave the whole world if he so chose. He could walk to Versailles and have the king kiss his feet. He could write the pope a perfumed letter and reveal himself as the new Messiah. He could do all this, and more, if he wanted to.He possessed a power stronger than the power of money, or terror, or death - the invincible power to command the love of man kind. There was only one thing the perfume could not do. It could not turn him into a person who could love and be loved like everyone else. So, to hell with it he thought. To hell with the world. With the perfume. With himself.” ( Perfume  02:14:46 )

Hollywood movies had always been reflective in delineating the impenetrable faction of human brain, reiterating the convoluted passions, embittered backlashes and inexplicable convictions lying within it. These movies had prototyped a bridge to correspond with the multifaceted layers of apprehensions and acceptance, mazing through the psyche of human beings. They have bailed us out in comprehending and acknowledging the human oriented irregularities and oddities in a diversified light, thereby accepting the idiosyncrasies as well as the demeanour of varied characters. Movies had betrothed us to a world of a wide receptacle, where we concur and establish a tie with the whims and fancies of people relating to different clans, regions and eras. 

Irrespective of the stratification tethered with one’s caste, creed, race, clan or nationality, there is one exclusive idea that fetters all people in the globe glued - a bunch of cultural superstitions and regional legends. However, the theme of noxious backdrops, gratifying horrors and metaphorical disrelishes had cheered and amused multitudes of heterogenous audience from time immemorial, rather than creating disgust or repulsion. Thus, it is a fact that Gothic Literature had more or less produced an integrated sense of both dread and delight in a contrasting level. 

Tom Tykwer’s movie Perfume based on Patrick Suskind’s novel of the same title holds out its beacon high, immersing itself in the glory as well as its gory in connection to the Gothic traits. Attributed to the themes of death, horror, curses and mysteries which ultimately provides the audience with a peachy distress, Gothic fiction originated in England in 1764 with the publication of  The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. Gothic stories were then considered as an extension of romantic pleasures in the background of medieval architecture and emulating buildings. The staple gothic traits which emerged slowly, started sipping into the seeds of screenplays sprouting them up as sinister movies which could again be classified as gothic horror movies. Tom Tykwer’s movie Perfume set in the French framework creates a vague brooding sense with certain striking and domineering gothic elements. 

Belief systems of every culture had been dominated and projected either through the Numerical systems or through gender representations or through bizarre destinies connected with people. The paper focusses specifically on the role of Number thirteen, the manifestation of the gothic through projection of women clad in beauty and finally through a set of individual destiny-strings hitched with the protagonist. 

Set in the eighteenth century France, Perfume - The Story of a Murderer is an adaptation of the 1985 novel Das Perfum by Patrick Suskind. The movie portrays Ben Wishaw as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille- a boy born in a putrid fish market and forsaken by his mother, but possessed with an extraordinary sense of smell. The plot creeps through Granouille’s sweeping but diabolic craving to capture and preserve the best scent of the world. During his journey towards the sublime fragrance, Grenouille, as a baby boy is handed over to an orphanage run by Madam Gaillard, where he grows up in isolation and hardships. As he mushrooms, he perceives his extra potential to smell and identify things around him. “When Jean Baptiste Grenouille did finally learn to speak he soon found that everyday language proved inadequate for all the olfactory experiences accumulating within himself.” ( Perfume 11.30 ) As an adolescent boy, he is later sold away to a tannery, for brawny physical work, though he outlives the other weak boys. His primary visit to Paris enraptures him with a variety of scents and leads him subsequently to Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman) - a maker of fine perfumes. Grenouille runs Baldini to thunderbolts with his new formula and combinations in manufacturing new scents and settles down finally at Paris to learn the secret behind preserving scents from the new master -Baldini.

Parallel to a musical note, a perfume comprises of twelve chords forming three substantial layer-chords - the head chord, the heart chord and the base chord. However, Baldini instills in Grenouille the chronicle of an Egyptian Pharoah’s tomb which, when opened, emitted a unique fragrance that pulled the entire crowd present there into a trance - a transportation to an angelic world triggered by the release of the scent. Baldini adds that it was the presence of a thirteenth chord in the fragrance which manifested the difference. Consequently, the hunt for this thirteenth chord by Grenouille is what turns instrumental in the upcoming homicidal quest that buds in the psyche of this protagonist. The chord thirteen bamboozles the readers as well as the audience with respect to the tales revolving around the diabolic number.

No data exists, and will never exist, to confirm that the number thirteen is an unlucky number, says Igor Radun of the Human Factors and Safety Behavior Group at the University of Helsinki's Institute of Behavioural Sciences in Finland. But however, the myths gyrating around number thirteen continues to shake us to believe it as the bearer of ill portent compared to its much lauded neighbour ‘twelve’ and the thread of Perfume exponentially reaffirms the ill-luck affixed with the number. East and west, the blacks and the whites and the young and the old join hands at one pivotal point - the diabolic stench of number thirteen. Though entrenched with deep-seated ideologies and perspectives in a modern scenario, Tom Tykwer, the director of the movie Perfume pulls us back to a world of eighteenth century France where the stigmatised notion of number thirteen remains appalling to the exodus with a formidable sinister force. 

The mystery behind the ill luck of number thirteen continues to remains steadfast, though the justifications that wheel around are often subconscious projections of our own belief systems leaning on to the less scientific fringe. The cosmic intelligence or the human think-stopper, however, has refurbished again and again the dark palms of the mysterious number thirteen. The mythological reasons date back to the biblical galore with the thirteen disciples of Jesus Christ with Judas Iscariot (the thirteenth disciple) who betrayed Christ. The Norse legend with twelve Gods and the thirteenth uninvited God triggering the troubles too support the unlucky element. The thirteen steps leading to the gallows and the hangman’s noose containing thirteen twists, speak volumes regarding the terror created with this specific number. The thirteenth trump card in a tarot deck signifies a death card and typically shows a skeleton riding a horse carrying a black flag.

However, number thirteen had always been the most meritorious number to be in channels with gothic traits. The devilish characteristic trait of this number has pushed in more pithy space for  multiple writers and directors to call forth the gothic features without facing the music of incorporating revenants and apparitions. Consequently, the movie tapers to its horrific plain as and when the hero decides to commence his hunt on the thirteenth chord. His undying desire to trace the ingredient for the thirteenth chord is what sets the plot, roll into motion.

The mysterious thirteenth chord that Grenouille is in search for, gradually blends with the feminine perfect scent that makes his predicament more staggered. When the feminine gothic emerged in early eighteenth century, they gave a mode of expression to female sensibility as a result of the suppression of female sexuality or as a challenge to the gender hierarchy and values of a male oriented orb. They either appeared as ghosts or haunted the disastrous men and thereby acclaimed their lost power on earth. But unfortunately, the women characters portrayed in Perfume are submerged to a voiceless realm, falling prey to the miasmic world in which they are groomed to death finally. The end result, however is the mystery that lies beneath, perplexing all of us equally. It is this vague and half defined emotion that keeps us on toes and lands us ultimately to the roots of underlying darkness. 

Grenouille accidentally observes a plum seller who is a red haired young girl in the narrow streets of Paris. Her scent tantalises him and he stalks her. The meeting culminates in her suffocated death by Grenouille, though he never had intentions any, to kill the girl. He strips her costumes off and he sniffs her repeatedly and tries to preserve her scent where his attempts turn futile, time and again. Grenouille turns distraught and decides to recreate the aroma of the girl. “The intoxicating power of the girl’s scent made it clear to him that the purpose of his miserable existence had a higher destiny.” ( Perfume 27:21) Unable to learn the art of preserving scents from Baldini, Grenouille leaves to Grass to learn the art of Enfleurage - the art of preserving scents after offering more than hundred new perfume-formulas to Baldini.

As soon as he arrives at Grasse, he catches the scent of Laura Riches ( Rachel-Hurd-wood), the red haired daughter of a wealthy clergyman. Grenouille realises that his long time quest is approaching completion. He pins down Laura’s scent as his thirteenth ingredient for the thirteenth chord - the linchpin of his perfume. 

Once Grenouille identifies the thirteenth chord, he tries varied methods in enfleurage which could preserve the scent of a woman. He kills a lavender picker and tries the hot enfleurage method which fails miserably. Without losing his perseverance, he attempts a cold enfleurage on a hired prostitute. Though the method turns successful, he had to crush her down to death, to experiment his new mechanism. He tries the extracted scent with the little dog of the prostitute, where the dog recognises the scent and follows him. Thus Grenouille embarks on a killing spree and kills many young women, looting their hair and nails and flinging the nude bodies on street after cold enfleurage thereby creating panic in the city of Paris. Once he preserves twelve different scents from different women, he lingers to pounce upon his thirteenth target - the thirteenth scent from the red haired Laura. In spite of the protective garb by her father, Grenouille attacks and kills Laura and preserves her scent and creates the world’s legendary perfume with the thirteenth chord-a mixture of thirteen different scents. 

Tykwer has invested a female language through his movie Perfume. However, the submerged sexuality plunges deep down when the feminine sensibility is crushed into lifeless bodies with shaven heads strewn over the narrow French streets. The pursuit for the perfect scent or the female scent turns Grenouille to a homicidal track of killing women in a series. But the battalion of policemen and clergymen are indeed surprised to notice that none of the women had been molested nor raped. Thus the movie takes its turns on a determined, specific obsession or rather as a protagonist in monomaniac juncture, where his ultimate quest is just to find the perfect scent of the world, to which he succeeds with his murderous ferocity on thirteen red haired young girls. 

Though his death-dealing instincts push him finally to the scaffold to be executed, Grenouille mesmerises the flustered crowd once more with his newly designed Perfume of his own, containing the magical thirteenth chord. The anti-hero position of the protagonist spills a chill down the spine of the spectators as he drugs out an entire Parisian community to a trance - a trance which intoxicates every human being to a magical world. The trance which ultimately picks them to a sexual orgy pits the entire French society to a scrupulous aura of taboo, depicting a true eighteenth century France. Though the created perfume can never bring Grenouille the sheer key to contentment, it moulds him up to the rank of a heavenly incarnation as and when he is in danger.

The character of Granouille is built upon an aura of nonplussing mysteries and the circumstances of his birth designs ripples of fear in our minds. Born in a stenchy fish market and discarded by his mother, Grenouille carries within him a sense of overwhelming terror thereby creating a repercussion on everything that he meets up with his life. Rather than being influenced by the surrounding predicaments, he influences and marks a difference to the external world, especially to the circle of characters bordering him. Grenouille’s character is moulded both in physical and mental darkness. His untidy clothes, filthy physique, mucky nails, shabby look and his unkempt hair triggers the panic associated with his character. Tykwer has represented Grenouille with minimum dialogues. As we scroll through the movie, a few dialogues that emerge from Grenouille is restricted to the art of perfumes and scents. He is numb and almost silent in the remaining part of the story. His gestures and actions pertain to the sequence rather than his dialogues. In a nutshell, he appears as a reticent hero who barges in and disappears only to enslaven the world with his most specifically designed legendary perfume - the elixir of the world.

However, the darkness Grenouille carries within him is attributed even to the external realm where he stays. The circle of characters around him are affected in a beeline, as and when their connection with Grenouille enters and exits. Grenouille is born with the dark fate of death as he sends his mother directly to the gallows as soon as he is born. His mother is accused of casting off the baby and is severely punished to death. Having delivered still-born babies in a series, his mother had cast him off to rot in the muck-strewn mud of the fish-market, believing the baby to be dead. But, however, the piercing smell of the market arouses the nostrils of the baby and he starts screaming, ultimately making his mother the culprit. The very first hour of his life leads to the death of his biological mother. Soon after his mother’s death, Granouille is sent to an orphanage run by Madam Gaillard. As soon as he spends the first set of years in the orphanage, the orphanage head sells him off to a hunky master named Grimal at a tannery. Regrettably, the money she takes in after the bargain of Grenouille hardly lives as she meets with a fatal death of getting assaulted and brutally killed by a set of burglars. “Unfortunately for Madam Gaillard, the bargain was short-lived.”( Perfume 13.01 ) Tykwer’s direction easily meshes with his crazy material as well as the distilled insanity that goes with Grenouille. The complexities within Grenouille extends even to the external circumstances that he adheres to. 

Purchased by the brutal taskmaster Grimal, Grenouille continues with his miserable days at the tannery. In spite of the hefty tasks, he survives and remains at the tannery to aid his master. As his first visit to the street of Paris launches him to the vivacious Perfume maker Baldini, he leaves the tannery master which triggers his master’s death due to a terrible accident. Grenouille bears within him a destiny which shakes off the fate of the members around him. In other words, Grenouille holds within himself a shade of the darkened death which he spills from place to place as he travels. The moment he plans to leave his new master Baldini and journeys to Grasse, we are hell bend to believe that a brooding instance is about to happen to Baldini. As mystery unfolds, Baldini dies in an earthquake on the very same night as his multi storied house on the bridge quivers and crumbles down. “Deeply satisfied he went back to sleep and awoke no more in his life.” ( Perfume 58:23)

Grenouille joins the enfleurage team at Grasse from where he learns the key to unfurl the fragrances and the ways to preserve them. As the movie roots in with the more horrid instances, we realise that the member at the enfleurage team, Dominick Druot is arrested by the policemen and executed, mistaking him for the murderer, as and when Grenouille leaves the enfleurage team. Thus, we see the unseen fate of death installed with the close circle of  Grenouille who is only obsessed with the making of the legendary perfume. 

Nevertheless, unaffected by features of decency or morality, Grenouille views the world as nothing but a laboratory for him to experiment . His death spree begins with the plum seller, taking him to the atrocious act at Baldini’s basement ( the lavender picker placed in enfleurage ) and finally to the countryside where he kills women in an uncontrolled series. The paranoia that he creates when virgin girls are killed, strikes the dark pitch tone of the gothic attributes in the movie. All the characters along with the protagonist add to the devilish hub of the plot either through their confabulation, or taciturn gestures or at times with the acknowledgement of the diabolic. 

Though a hard film to like and digest, it is even more harder to dismiss it, as it is a fantabulous movie soaring high in its mysterious traits and lingering long with the gothic traits. Escaping from the scaffold of execution, Grenouille’s last gesture seems even more harrowing than the previous murders. In his fits of rage and despondency, he shatters himself to torn particles in the penultimate scene. He pours on him the remaining essence of his perfume after reaching the very same fish market where he was born, which makes the crowd around him turn cannibalistic, thereby devouring him to pieces. “Within no time, Jean Baptiste Grenouille disappeared from the face of the earth. When they had finished, they felt a virginal glow of happiness.” ( Perfume 02:15:33 )

Thus the instances take a cyclic scheme as we find in Gothic stories, culminating almost at the same decisive physical position from where it began - the fish market. As the movie comes to a close, there is still a slice of surprise and awe that Tykwer keeps apart for his audience. As we finish watching the movie, what is left with us is indeed the brooding sense of a disoriented core, delighting and decaying us at the same point. Perfume is a work so bold and distinctive, a movie that sprouted from the Gothic seeds spreading more of its grains to the audience. Perfume is ghostly and horrific, mesmerising and creative but still it smells fantastic with its intricacies of viscousness as well as manipulations. 

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A,Krishna Sunder