>>211611444
>but despite it being very grounded in reality
Sincerely, what are you talking about? His sense of smell is unambiguously supernatural, and he has no smell of his own. The whole point and tragedy of his character is that he is clearly not human. Who is obsessed with the idea of putting 'love,' which he associates with beauty, into a bottle?
For Christ's sake, he sits in a cave for 7 years (I don't remember if it's said in the movie, but in the book it is so). This entire story is full of fantastic and supernatural elements.
You realize that covering beautiful women in fat will not produce a love perfume too?
Where did you see realism?
>You could argue that it was supposed to be metaphorical
It's not. It's very literal. He made the father of a child he murdered proclaim that he loves him.
He looks at this and ponders how strong this aroma must be to produce this emotion. Except he can't feel any of it; he can never actually understand what he created. He made a perfume that forces people to love, but he himself can never love anyone.
That's why he dips himself in it and returns to the gutter from which he came from.
It's an incredible ending.