All You Need Is Love… And A Good Director
What makes you decide to like a character? What, in a movie, a play, a book, makes you say that one character is good while another character is bad? Tom Tykwer is a master at making the audiences see one thing and think another. If you see a girl rob her own father’s bank you would think that by the end of the movie you’re waiting for her to die, but Tykwer uses his artistic mind to convince the viewer that it was just a minor flaw, that robbing a bank is like throwing your trash out the window on the highway. The camera angles and colors he uses to portray his characters shows the audience that a person is either good or bad, in some of his films though it is even harder to tell the difference between good and evil. In Perfume: the Story of a Murderer Tykwer takes a character that kills to capture scent and turns them into the most loved person on and off the screen. The main thing that drives me to watch his films over and over and over is the fact that he can portray one of life’s oldest emotions in new ways every time. Love has been used in every form of media since the dawn or written language. Love has been used to describe “monsters” like in the Bride of Frankenstein; it has been used to bring together two completely different people i.e.-every “chick flick” movie ever, but I have never seen anyone use love the way Tom Tykwer does in his films, specifically Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run) and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.
Lola Rennt is a film made in 1999. It follows a female through three different scenarios as she tries to save her boyfriend from some trouble he got himself into. From the beginning of the film Lola is portrayed as the center of the action. The color in her scenes is a very high hue; her hair contrasts the wallpaper and props behind her. Your eyes are immediately drawn to her so you know that she will play a prominent role in the rest of the film. The shots are quick and to the point, nothing it drawn out everything is a fast take, a fast cut, a fast shot reverse shot. The camera never is able to focus on one thing for too long. This gives the viewer a sense of speed; that there is a lot of action happening and there won’t be a break in that action anytime soon. Immediately you see that Lola takes control in her relationship with Manni. Rooney notices something very interesting in his viewing of Lola Rennt, “the film underscores the bond between Lola and Manni by shooting in 35mm only when they are onscreen -- and on video when they are not.” (Rooney). This shows the audience of the connection. It is a very subtle difference but our minds catch it and associate that these two are different in some way. They evoke a strange feeling when they are on screen together, and by filming in a different speed of film Tykwer is able to make the viewer notice the love they share. The clocks are also an important part of Tykwer’s filming style in this movie. The clocks represent how much time she has left before her love dies or gets kidnapped by his boss, but it’s not just the fact that they are used, it’s also how they are integrated into the frame. Tykwer cleverly slips clock faces into the frame after panning a great span or cutting to a fancy piece of art that happens to tell the time. Tykwer uses bright colors to distinguish what characters will be or are important in a scene. The colors are a big part of how Tykwer portrays the love between his characters. This color, however, takes a completely different twist in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.
In this film Tywker concentrates less so on vibrant colors and more so on using color to portray smell. His use of zooming and fast cuts is a contrast to the zooming and fast cuts of Lola Rennt. The editing is used to show the sense that is hardest to portray on film: smell. He is forced to come up with new ways to show Jean-Baptiste Grenouille’s amazing sense of smell (Elley).

The love present is not between a drug runner and his girlfriend; in this film love is between a man we should hate and smell. One rarely recognizes that a person can in fact fall in love with an inanimate object/idea. Grenouille starts out as a small child smelling and identifying everything just by its smell alone. In this way he can sense the world around him without having to see it. When he finally meets a girl whose smell he falls in love with, you see the color change. It goes from a bland earthy tone to a bright backlit frame. It appears that the young lady emanates her wondrous smell into the audience, but really it is just Tykwer playing with your mind again. By changing the colors he creates a more comfortable atmosphere and gives you more of a reason to fall in love with him as a character. By the end of the film you see that Grenouille has accepted his fate and is bored with scents now that he has created that which he deems perfect. In the final scene of the film we see Grenouille cover himself in the scent and go into a pile of homeless people to be torn to shreds in the same spot he was born. The lighting in this scene alone is phenomenal. The frame brightens; the colors pop, the hues grow stronger. All of this the perfume he had created. His use of change of color compares to the change in film in Lola Rennt when Manni and Lola are together.
Tykwer uses the same basic style of filming in every movie he makes. That style just has different key elements from film to film. He uses your sense of sight to appeal to your heart and compel you to love someone, something, or some character simply with clever camera tricks. Tom Tykwer will never cease to amaze me in his talented use of cinematography. In Perfume, Tykwer gets you to not only understand why Grenouille is killing, but also to feel sympathy for him when he can’t kill the person he is after. As an audience member it is hard to keep a level head during the film. He convinces you using the lighting and color scheme that Grenouille is simply a servant of the olfactory nerves. As long as he doesn’t give up and take the easy road, I see Tom Tykwer becoming a successful director by classic American standards simply by charming the audience with his skills. I believe that, if he wanted to, he could make you love Hitler in one of his movies. Nothing he does happens by accident, he knows what he has to do for you to fall in love and he knows how it would be best fit in (Bozzola). Tykwer will never cease to amaze cinema buffs and directors. He is one of the few directors that will survive entirely on his ability to charm and amaze using a camera lens.


Bibliography-
--- Bozzola, Lucia. "Tom Tykwer - Trailer - Showtimes - Cast - Movies & TV - NYTimes.com." Movie Reviews, Showtimes and Trailers - Movies - New York Times. New York Times. 5 Mar. 2009 .
---Rooney, David. "Run Lola Run Review - Read Variety's Analysis Of The Movie Run Lola Run." Entertainment news, movie reviews, awards, festivals, celebrity photos, industry events - Variety. 9 Sept. 1998. 19 Feb. 2009 .
---Elley, Derek. "Review of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - Variety.com." Entertainment news, movie reviews, awards, festivals, celebrity photos, industry events - Variety. 4 Oct. 2006. 19 Feb. 2009 .