Fresh Method

This month, The Criterion Channel has a method acting playlist so I watched 1967's The Graduate. I'd say Dustin Hoffman's performance is certainly the most crucial component of the film's success.

The first half of the film, from Anne Bancroft's famous initial seduction of Hoffman, through the beginnings of their relationship, is the best part of the film. It's mostly due to Hoffman's timing.

His awkwardness is just so authentic. His quick responses when asked simple questions show a young man out of his depth, vacillating between obvious lies to hide it, and adorable, innocent honesty that shows he's unaware of just how naked he is. It's the kind of timing I don't think you could get outside of method acting.

The second half of the film isn't so good. Katherine Ross isn't very interesting, certainly never as believable as Hoffman. She's kind of a stock pretty girl. It seems like Anne Bancroft's character was originally meant to have more depth. There's a scene where she alludes to studying art in college and there's a faint suggestion that maybe she was attracted to Hoffman's character because he reminds her of how she used to be the innocent young graduate whose dreams were snatched away. But then she just becomes a simplistic villain.

The Graduate is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1706

A wooden foot awaits the iron leg.
What meaning's found in plastic clocks at night.
'Twas only games that changed the chick to egg.
And boiling peace could turn to feathered flight.
Adjusted lists confirm researcher games.
With idols sold, the melting can was bought.
Accounted red, the berries changed their names.
With fluttered eyes, the serpent cord was taught.
With courage fingers buttoned coats depart.
A summer sleeve cold saunter back to town.
With feet for hands, the crawling pieces start.
The chosen card has named a weepy clown.
Constructing weeping cows amassed the farm.
Nutritious meals require frequent harm.

Just Follow Your Nose . . . To Murder

Don't underestimate body odour--it could rule the world. 2006's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer presents the life of an 18th century French orphan with a preternatural sense of smell. He also happens to be a psychopath who can see value in nothing but smell. Sort of a cross between Psycho and a later Anne Rice vampire novel, its basic idea of a kind of aesthetic taking priority over all other things is charming but the film suffers from an underdeveloped anti-hero played by Ben Whishaw. Supporting players Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman elevate the film greatly, particularly Hoffman, but their appearances are all too brief, leaving us with long periods of film that feel like waiting in a particularly colourless dentist's office.

There's another great actor involved--John Hurt provides an utterly superfluous narration one suspects was added at the insistence of the studio or after a bad test screening. But if you're going to have superfluous narration, you can't go wrong with John Hurt and he injects some life into the many awkward, overwrought lines like, "When Jean-Baptiste did finally learn to speak he soon found that everyday language proved inadequate for all the olfactory experiences accumulating within himself."

Jean-Baptiste (Whishaw) is shown growing up in the grey, grey, and grey streets of muddy old Paris amid the fish and the garbage, a city where people seem to have little to talk about beyond the topic of this miserable orphan. The film has a narrow focus and stays there until Dustin Hoffman shows up.

He plays an Italian perfumer called Baldini whose talents aren't what they used to be and his business is suffering. Hoffman's performance is great and we can see the levels of pride, curiosity, and need in his conversations with the strange young man who turns up one day to deliver animal skins, a young man who's effortlessly able to assemble the perfume of Baldini's competitor. Soon business is booming but it's not enough for Jean-Baptiste.

As the title says, he's a murderer. His first kill seems to have been accidental, a young woman selling fruit whose neck he seems to break somehow when he tries to cover her mouth to stop her screaming. He'd been too focused on her scent. After this, he's compelled to a string of murders of only beautiful women. The movie never addresses why only beautiful women though Alan Rickman's character does point out this pattern to the killings. He plays a wealthy man with a beautiful daughter whose health and safety compel him to work hard to weed out the serial killer.

I'm not sure it's true good looks are always accompanied by good natural odour. I remember a rumour that Brad Pitt has terrible body odour.

Anyway, Jean-Baptiste seems to have more supernatural abilities than the film accounts for. He's able to whisk away two women from a party without anyone noticing. Another woman he manages to kill, disrobe, and put in a pickling tank at a perfumery without any of his coworkers noticing. Many of these problems could've been handled by simply making him a vampire, which I suspect he was in an earlier draft of the source novel by Patrick Suskind.

Whether or not this movie works for you may depend greatly on how attracted you are to Ben Whishaw. One reviewer compared Jean-Baptiste to Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov but Jean-Baptiste doesn't have the layers of philosophy and internal conflict of Raskolnikov. He's about as complicated as Toucan Sam, he just follows his nose. I can imagine if he's your type, though, the movie might be a satisfying, wicked pleasure.