German
born director Tom Tykwer made his feature debut in 1993 with
Deadly Maria, which he followed with Winter Sleepers. He
scored an international hit with Run Lola Run (1998). His
other films include The Princess & The Warrior (2000)
and Heaven (2002).
Perfume:
The Story of A Murderer is
adapted – by Tykwer,
Andrew Birkin and Bern Eichinger – from Patrick Süskind’s
international bestseller. It stars Ben
Whishaw as Jean-Baptiste
Grenouille, a young man with a rare gift and an amoral nature.
How happy you must have been to go and see a production
of Hamlet at The Old Vic, and finally find your Grenouille
on stage?
“I sat down and thought ‘thank God, finally!’,
because it had been such a long search. Somehow I knew there
would be the moment when I got an intuitive sense that we
had the right guy. That’s what it was, Ben and I hit
it off immediately on a level that told me we could tackle
this together. He let himself fall into the character but
he’s a very intelligent guy, intellectually capable
of all the complexities that the novel contained and the
film needs to deliver. So sometimes you’d ask him something
completely instinctive or physical, and five minutes later
be discussing something really complicated that you wanted
to capture. And he was able to always fulfil both sides.
That’s great for me, because that’s the way I
direct.”
He is exceptional in the film, isn’t
he?
“He’s amazing. It’s a combination of skills,
his body language goes together with the way he speaks, the
way he looks, and this continuing, ambiguous power that he
brings with him. There’s this whole feeling that he
is somebody extremely innocent and extremely dark at the
same time, a feeling that there is something feral about
him as well as a very vulnerable human being.”
How close were you to casting someone else who may have
been less suitable, or to the film falling through altogether?
“I was always clear that we
needed to wait. If it took us ten years we would wait ten
years until we found the guy who could play this role.
And I felt that once we had him we could convince the financiers.”
Do you see a parallel in Grenouille manipulating the crowd,
as he does at one point in the film, and a director manipulating
his audience?
“There’s an obvious subtext within the film
that resonates all the way through, about manipulation. Of
peoples’ emotions of course, that is the very substance
of cinema. Somebody tries to make people believe in him being
someone extraordinary, by putting on a disguise. We’re
heightening the appearance of personalities and characters
and actors to a degree that they become desirable because
we know people long for things out of their reach. We know
that because we are the same as them, and so we kind of play
with our own desires. Life is dominated by manipulation.”
There is, in that crowd scene, a
kind of mass hysteria that Grenouille sparks, isn’t
there?
“In any mass situation – and we’ve had
particular experiences of that in Germany – the effect
of being part of that crowd when they get excited is that
you tend to enhance it rather than get away from it. It’s
like a virus. There’s something about letting your ‘self’ drop
and sinking into that person or group that you want to be
with. That’s why we conceived the entire experience
there a little bit like a rock concert. I also always imagined
the experience of Grenouille being like one of those pop
stars, who when you’re in the concert you also get
lost in this whole hysterical feeling for them.”
But therein lies his pain too, doesn’t
it?
“Of course there’s also
a very complex narcissistic element involved with every
single person in the room. They also project themselves
into that star and imagine themselves being up there, but
at the same time we also all have a secret knowledge of
the loneliness of that one person up there. About the separation
that is there between him or her and us. We know all of
the stories about these super lonely rock stars that are
everywhere, who die lonely or commit suicide.”
Is the harder thing directing a big scene like this that
conveys so much, or an intimate close up of an actor?
“It’s equally complicated to do, it’s
more or less equally demanding because of the concentration
and the focus you need in order to get the intensity of both
of those things. It was demanding and quite exhausting.”
Do you identify modern resonances in this story that contemporary
audiences can take away from it?
“I think that’s the real quality of it, that
it opens many doors into different territories and subjects
that are not thrown at you or pushed at you, this is what
it’s ultimately about. It obviously implies a lot of
things, a lot of thoughts about celebrity and manipulation,
and how power and influence have gone through a metamorphosis
throughout the centuries. There’s so much stuff to
chew on, I loved that about the book. Strangely enough period
pieces can often bring us closer to subjects that are important
for today, rather than stories that pick up on them directly.”
This is big international movie, with all the complication
that might entail. Is it true you were directing it in four
different languages?
“Yeah, but the set language was English and of course
all the main actors are English. But because we were shooting
parts in France, parts in Spain and we had a big German crew
it’s true that it was a bit muddled at times. But never
to a degree that I think was disturbing. I always take my
crew with me and that’s very important for me. The
DP has shot all my films since my first short film. And the
production designer and the costume designer are all people
that I’ve known for a long time, so this whole crew
is kind of a family, they all have their secret codes, they’re
like buddies. We’ve known each other for a long time,
so there is this family thing, and a lot of German mumbling.
So I think Ben sometimes had this problem that he was sometimes
surrounded by all these Germans, he was in the middle sometimes.
He was even more lonely because he was standing there a lot
of the time without an actor to act with, just himself or
a dead body or some glass jars for company.”
You have said that Taxi Driver was
an influence on this film, haven’t you?
“Yes, and Ben didn’t know the film, he hadn’t
seen it. I hired a screening room and the two of us watched
Taxi Driver there. It’s one of my favourites, a classic
where you are forced into the perspective of this character.
That’s what I wanted Ben to see, how it’s possible
to stay with someone who actually goes really disturbingly
off track. Travis Bickle develops into kind of a fascist
but at the same time you understand his motivations. The
loneliness of the character keeps you on his side, and that’s
the dangerous thing. That’s what fascinates me about
this movie, when you get seduced into it, and you have to
be strong enough to make your own judgement.”
Some people are troubled by the
moral complexities of films like this, aren’t they?
“It’s why they ask about Perfume, why I have
a sympathetic, victimised hero who is also this totally horrible
serial killer. Why, they ask, do I want the audience to connect
with him. I say because it’s more interesting than
just despising him.”
How did you come to cast Dustin Hoffman in the small but
crucial role of perfumier Baldini?
“It was easy, we knew each other from before. He had
seen Run Lola Run and he called me, actually it was in the
middle of the night while I was shooting The Princess & The
Warrior. I was in this hotel and this phone call came through
and somebody said ‘it’s Dustin Hoffman trying
to call you’, and I said ‘yeah – right!
Very funny’. I had only three hours of sleep and that
was interrupted by somebody saying Dustin was trying to call
me. But it was him. And of course it was better than sleeping
because he was completely enthusiastic about my movie, he
said we had to work together and I said ‘okay, I’ll
find a role’. And it took me five years to find the
right part, which was here.”
What led you to think of him for Baldini though?
“The moment I read it I knew it was Dustin, because
he’s got this flamboyant side. And of course I loved
the idea of Ben meeting this ageing genius of an actor, and
this ageing genius meeting the young pretender. This whole
competitive energy that’s hidden there, the whole tension.
Of course they were very sympathetic to each other, but Dustin
was watching this guy taking over. This is the next generation,
here he is, and he’s really good. And he had to admit
how really good Ben is. There was all this going on, of course
combined with a lot of sympathy that fuelled the scenes between
them.”
|
