'okay, everybody pick out someone you wanna punch.'*

[qthewetsprocket]

rarely, you see a movie that not only makes you want the two hours of your life back, but makes you feel soiled on the inside for having watched it. one of the first for me was alfred hitchcock's frenzy. another was kathryn bigelow's strange days.

tonight i unfortunately saw one to beat them both: tom twyker's perfume.basically, it's about a

Comments

[tencrush]

I had to read the book in German when I was in school and I had the same problems with it, and was accused of being a literary philistine and not getting it. Meh.

[qthewetsprocket]

'how dare you object to our graphically offensive male gaze wish fulfillment fantasy...er, i mean, srs scholarly literature? ignorant female!'

[fenm]

MST also gives us: "Aside from never again experiencing joy in my life, I don't think [name of movie] had any kind of negative effect on me."

[iko]

My sister recommended the book to me. I think it was recommended to her by some of her college friends. She attended Wellesley.

I never got around to reading it. I couldn't really get past the first two chapters because it wasn't really engaging.

[qthewetsprocket]

methinks you dodged a bullet, there. i want to watch something else now to wash the residue of this vile piece of shit from my neurons before i go to sleep so i won't dream about it, but i kind of don't want to soil something i like (like life on mars) by even watching it within close chronological proximity, just in case the movie's syphillitic putrification is contageous.

in other words: didn't like it much. can you tell?

[iko]

Perhaps watch something that you know is bad but find enjoyable anyway?

I keep my copy of Lara Croft close at hand for such purposes.

[kateorman]

strange days

Snap.

[qthewetsprocket]

And the ending seemed rather logical to me when it came. I don't know how they did it in the movie?

the whole city was up in arms, ready to torture him to death in the most gruesomely violent way they could conceive...and then, all of a sudden, they were heralding him as the messiah and worshipping him just because of the magic perfume he put on himself. yes, it really was that abrupt a change. deus ex perfuma, anyone?

[qthewetsprocket]

yeah, that's the denoument, not the climax - after the big orgy in the town square, he goes to a little street corner (no telling how much time has passed in between the two scenes) and pours all the scent on himself so the peasants can 'love him to death' like dionysus. i don't know if it was intentional suicide in the book, but the fact that, at the end, the killer was still the one with all the power, who decided how and when he'd end his own life and not the authorities, rang way too true to real life serial killers. and i found the fact that we're supposed to be sympathetic towards his character in spite of all this really, really offensive.