Tom Tykwer Bending thru' time

Director, writer, producer and composer Tom Tykwer was born in 1965 in Wuppertal, Germany. He showed an interest in film-making from childhood, making super 8 films from the age of 11. Among his first jobs was working at a local art-house cinema. Tykwer eventually relocated to Berlin, first working as a film projectionist and then becoming head of programming at the Moviemento Theater. Tykwer's friend, the director Rosa von Praunheim, encouraged him to experiment with film-making and the result was the short 'Because' (1990). Other short films followed, and in 1993 Tykwer made his first full length feature 'Die tödliche Maria' (1993). Tykwer's international breakthrough came in 1998 with 'Run Lola Run' (1998), which was a hit with both audiences and critics alike. The film garnered many awards and was the most successful German film of the year.
Your films always have an emotional honesty, regardless of the actual narrative. How important is that to you?
What I do most intensely when I'm trying to make myself ready for a film, or even investigating whether I'm able to do it or not, is assess whether I feel connected with the subjective energy of the main character. If I don't connect on a very profound level with that person, I'd never do the film, because I know I wouldn't have the breath for three or four years of my life to be attached to someone I don't deeply care for - and I do deeply care for Grenouille. As disturbing as it might be, I think I understand a lot about his motives, traumas, fears and desires. That's the moment when I realise, 'OK, I think I can make the film work'. Not in any banal way, but in a complex and profound way, because I understand the character and that gives me all the ideas for the film.
Your script is fantastic. It's like you've distilled the book down to its most precise and finest elements...
It was really difficult. What was most complicated was Süskind's ambiguous way of treating the main character. In the scriptwriting, the biggest challenge was to make Grenouille a dark hero... I wanted to have this seductive energy about him, even though he's so disturbing. And it was really difficult because he's doing many things that work in literature that don't work in film. So we had to read just them. I never wanted to change anything from the novel that I liked in terms of dark and drastic tones - it's still a drastic movie, but seductively drastic.
The film, Perfume, plays like an unsensitised fairy tale - was this your intention?
Very much so. I think it's a romantic horror, gothic thriller. But it focuses on the romantic as much as it does on the horror. You've got some classically constructed horror sequences, but at the same time it's a film about someone who's in the pursuit of beauty - and of course, happiness - and being loved.
It's very much like going back to German Expressionist film.
I love and admire Expressionist film. In some parts we wanted to go there and be extreme, but at the same time it's important to think about the seductiveness of a film - it's got to have a good flow so that there's something smooth and inviting about it. You kind of accept the most gruesome details in Perfume because somehow the film makes them appear as part of a beautiful, fluid ending - that's what the novel did too. I wanted people to feel comfortable - so there's John Hurt's voice narrating, and it all seems like something serious and epic - but what it does is totally shocking, drastic, compulsive and disturbed.

SOURCE: INTERNET