Girl With a Pearl Earring

Rating:
Summary: A Lustrous Pearl of a Film
Review: We watched the movie with some friends (a medievalist, French student, art historian, etc.). All agreed that it was pitch perfect: superb acting, settings, composition, and mood. A film that will remain in our thoughts and on our favorites list. Convincing and highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Delft, Holland circa 1662
Review: What can I add to what has already been said here?? Scarlett Johansson as the illiterate chambermaid Griet, daughter of a tile maker, has her ruddy face framed by her chambermaid's cap for the entire film except for one scene. All the leads besides Griet are very good: the sensitive Vermeer, his intensely jealous wife, her straight-laced mother, the rich, lecherous patron played by Tom Wilkerson; Griet's butcher boyfriend. The rigid discipline and caste of the Vermeer household is immediately apparent as Vermeer's wife right off the bat tells Griet not to speak unless spoken to; she is a pawn in a larger scenario. However, Vermeer eventually finds a surprising kindred artistic spirit in the common Griet, something his wife cannot provide. The film's atmosphere is uncommonly beautiful, artistic, and historical; the musical score adds to the film's atmosphere, and Griet's many slight curtsies and the longer bows of the men add to the film's authenticity. The relationship between Griet and Vermeer never remotely approaches an extramarital affair although there are some elements that suggest it might.

Rating:
Summary: Exquisitely Beautiful, but a Very Thin Plot
Review: I didn't like Tracy Chevalier's book, GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING. I found it thin in both characterization and plot, but several friends told me how gorgeous the film is so I decided to give it a try. Well, it certainly is gorgeous, surpassing all my expectations, but, while the storyline is better than that in the book, it is still barely there.

The plot (if one can even use that word in referring to this film) revolves around a young girl named Griet who becomes a servant in the Vermeer household in 17th century Delft.

Like many artists, Vermeer is constantly teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and must accept "assignments" from patrons, most notably the wealthy, but crass, van Ruijuen. Vermeer's wife, Catharina, doesn't make his life any easier, either, with her jealousy and constant need for pampering. Only Griet, who goes about her work silently and efficiently, seems to be an ally.

GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING is a film that is perfectly cast. Scarlett Johansson is luminous and understated in the role of Griet. With little dialogue, Johansson must convey Griet's thoughts and feelings through expressions and gestures and she does a wonderful job throughout the film.

Essie Davis is perfect as the always-pregnant Catharina just as Tom Wilkinson is perfect as the vulgar van Ruijuen. Colin Firth is good as the morose and brooding Vermeer, but his performance is a bit overshadowed, through no fault of his own, simply because the other characters are such strong personalities. GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING is clearly Johansson's vehicle and I can't imagine anyone else in the starring role.

People who love a film for its nonstop action or convoluted plot won't find much to like here. GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, though not a long film, can, at times, seem agonizingly slow. GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING is definitely a film for lovers of beauty, especially art lovers. Visually, this film is gorgeous, simply stunning. Many of the scenes are so beautiful, they're almost breathtaking, e.g., Griet cleaning the windows of the Vermeer household, lovers walking along a tree-lined canal, even vegetables being chopped for a meal.

If I have one criticism regarding this film (other than the very thin plot), it's the score. Alexandre Desplat did a wonderful job, don't get me wrong, but I think this film would have been improved if period music had been used, as it was in THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE.

While everyone involved with GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING seems to have done a superlative job, this film ultimately belongs to Johansson for her beautifully understated acting and to Eduardo Serra for his exquisitely gorgeous cinematography. I wouldn't recommend buying the DVD, but I would definitely recommend renting it.

Rating:
Summary: Great film. Firth and Johansen shine!
Review: This movie was breathtaking. Visually, the film echoes the work of Vermeer with its vivid colors and use of shadows, light and dark. It is as if I stepped into Vermeer's Holland. The story is engaging and the tension between Vermeer (Firth) and Griet (Johansen) is so strong. Again, Colin Firth delivers an excellant performance, conveying so much with a smoldering look or angry glare that the little lines he does have are almost unnecessary. Scarlett Johanson as Griet is wonderful as well. The score is very well done, adding to the film and never distracting from it. Wonderful performances all around. Any fan of good film making, Vermeer or Colin Firth should definately view this film!

Rating:
Summary: SMOLDERING GLANCES AND SUGGESTIVE CONVERSATIONS LEAD TO NADA
Review: Sure, very cool. It is beautifully lit art on film, it's luminous. With dozens of scenes worthy of framing and mounting in galleries. And several artistic tropes like kitchen sinks, fluffy European countryside outfits, chillies, forgotten mirrors, color mixing palettes. Plus, some good ol' accordion music in the backdrop.

All this produces the cinematic equivalent of window shopping. You can see it, but there's nothing to feel or experience. It's a chain of images of famous Vermeer works, and the historical detail is painstakingly realized.

We get teasers of a budding love story, which gives us hope of an oncoming story, a theme. It never does. Oh yeah, it's supposed to work under the surface, but it ends up buried so deep that it's hard to believe. Smoldering glances and vaguely suggestive conversations lead to precious little.

And then, thank you folks, it's time to go home. Which is where you should have been to begin with.

Rating:
Summary: Best Movie of the Year!!!
Review: I must say this is one of my personal most favorite films. Its one of the best i have seen in awhile. The passion and intensity between the main characters is so well done that you really do get lost in the film. So over all i would ofcoure recommend this film to anyone who is interested in period,art or love storys.

Rating:
Summary: Quiet Beauty
Review: THE GIRL WITH THE PEARL EARRING is so quiet and beautiful; it is a mystery in a way. It is a love story. But you must ask yourself, does Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth) really love Griet (Scarlett Johansson), the housemaid, or does the artist love his art and the creative process?
Griet comes into the Vermeer household after her family has suffered a financial setback. She is a protestant and the Vermeers are Catholic. From the beginning she is a stranger and yet she sets out to do her work without fuss. She is an intelligent person with a curiosity and a love of painting. I'm not sure this comes across in the film, but her father was a tile painter and so she knows something about painting. This is why she carries the tile with her to the Vermeers, and why the daughter's smashing of it, is so cruel.
Vermeer, too, is an outsider in his own household. His emotionally unstable wife cannot enter his world, the world of the artist. This makes her jealous of Griet. Maria, Vermeer's mother takes care of the finances. The impractical artist would just like to paint for the pleasure of creation. No one understands the artist except another artist. Despite her position as maid, Griet is a kindred spirit to Vermeer.
I loved the lighting and the set decoration on this film. Yes, it is like entering Vermeer's paintings. Vermeer's paintings are quiet mysteries and so is this movie. The characters in the film resonate strongly of Flemish/Dutch portraits -- especially Pieter, the butcher apprentice, Maria, Tanneke, the housekeeper who resembles Vermeer's The Milkmaid. We view the movie as if it is a Vermeer painting, from windows, from doorways, as voyeuristic outsiders. Vermeer with his use of the camera obscura reflects back into our world of film. By the way, optics was a very big thing back in the 17th century. This is where science and art connect both in their time and our time.
Some people don't understand the covering of the hair. Hair was considered very sexual. Sexuality was sinful, especially outside marriage. This had to with the Christian religion of the time. A young unmarried woman did not show her hair, because it was immodest. Only a husband should see the hair at night when they were making love. When Vermeer peeked in on Griet as her hair was uncovered, he was doing the forbidden. Like his paintings, he was being a voyeur into a world he could not enter. Although Griet refers to her hair as brown, it is clearly a lovely red color. Griet, being a self-effacing girl and brought up in a modest household, would not think of her hair as beautiful and would downplay its color. Red is the color of carnal passion, the color of the harlot. Not very modest.
This movie was gorgeous. The actors were all wonderful, especially Colin Firth as Vermeer and Scarlett Johansson as Griet. I enjoyed their subtle and restrained performances.
If you love beautifully made films that reflect the time period and culture they're depicting, then this is the film for you

Rating:
Summary: A truly remarkable performance
Review: Peter Weber's "Girl With a Pearl Earing" easily ranks among the top ten films of the year. Scarlett Johansson delivers a gripping performance. From the very beginning of the movie, you feel almost drawn to her. Indeed, she very well might have said fewer words than any actress ever in a leading role. Nevertheless, she commands attenttion in every scene. Her fawning silence envokes immediate sympathy for her unfortunate situation. This role is certainly much different than her part in "Lost in Translation" , but her performance, once again, commands the respect of Hollywood.

Rating:
Summary: forbidden passions flourishing beneath glazes of restraint
Review: Having fallen in love with Vermeer's art many years ago, (two of his paintings 'Woman With A Water Jug' and 'The Milkmaid' have graced my walls ever since) I was intrigued to read author Chevalier's novel, "Girl With A Pearl Earring" first and then see it rendered by director Peter Webber into film.

Scarlett Johansson projects Chevalier's Griet admirably in Webber's film. Her face is the mirror of the girl in Vermeer's portrait, her expressions innocent and knowing by turns, her acting brought into focus by Colin Firth's reserved and understated Vermeer subordinating dialogue to gesture and facial expression as it should be in bringing this portrait to life.

Of all Jan Vermeer's portraits of girls and women, and there are many in which the subject is overtly amour and seduction, (i.e. The Procuress, Woman and Two Men, Soldier and Laughing Girl, The Glass of Wine, Girl Interrupted at Her Music, etc.) 'Girl With A Pearl Earring' is one of his most intriguing and successful of such realizations in paint. Another is 'Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window'. In these works Vermeer captures the inner tension and eroticism of secret love affairs and the breaking of the vows of chastity so rigorously condemned by the Calvinists of Griet's church; hence just the removal of her head-dress and the revelation of her hair to Jan becomes a moment of erotic tension. Pearls figure often in Vermeer's portraits as a symbol of Superbia, the vanity of a girl dressing herself for her lover, and he was likely aware of St Francis De Sales admonition that "...the first part of the body that a man wants, and which a woman must loyally protect, is the ear; no word or sound should enter it other than the sweet sounds of chaste words, which are the oriental pearls of the gospel."

But Jan's view of pearls is anything but chaste as we see him sensuously fondling Catherine's pearl draped ear and neck while Griet watches with dismay and a touch of jealously. Thus when Griet is asked to wear her mistresses' pearls for the portrait she is fully aware of the implications without Jan uttering a single seductive word, and the glance Griet throws at Jan over the pearl in her ear, and that he captures in the painting speaks volumes for the powerful but unstated emotions passing between them. Thus in the story's climax when Griet agrees to wear the pearl for the portrait and asks Jan to pierce her ear, the act symbolizes the giving of her of innocence to him and of her deflowering. She in turn needs to experience the physical reality of that moment by racing to a tavern/brothel to give her virginity to Pieter, the young man wooing her, as opposed to losing her maidenhead to the patron Van Ruiven who clearly intends to either seduce or rape her. In the end Jan looses Griet to his wife's jealous fury but in that sacrifice Van Ruiven must now content himself merely with the image of his lust, for Jan has put Griet beyond his grasp. Time passes but then in Jan's final bequest Griet realizes that he has never forgotten her and that his feelings for her have long smoldered within him.

It is over this under-painting of passion, love, seduction, lust, and jealousy created by Chevalier for her novel that Webber paints wonderful glazes of local color for his film. The result is a masterpiece bringing Chevalier's novel and Vermeer's world with his artistic vision of lost innocence to vibrant life on the screen.

Rating:
Summary: silence is golden - this will haunt you
Review: I'll go against the grain here and say I think the movie is better than the book, mostly because the format of a movie in general is a third-person viewpoint of events. We are voyeurs while watching films, witnessing events and intimate moments like hidden ghosts. Griet's character in the movie is more believable, she's illiterate, she's hard working, she's ignorant of many things (but far from stupid). But the book makes the mistake of using Griet as the narrator of the book, as if we are to believe she's telling us what's happening. I just don't buy it. An illiterate character telling her story like a novelist? Nuh uh. It jolts me out of any realism the book tries to convey. However, the movie is like a secret camera capturing the subtle and VERY important language of the face and eyes. Most of the movie is short on dialogue, but FULL of expressive language by way of body movement and glances of the eyes and even the use of clothing. The movie's plot or story has been boiled down by many other reviews, so there's no need to keep mining that ore. But I've heard some people complain about how the characters don't "talk" enough. But this movie communicates more with expressions of the face than anything words could do. Colin Firth, who plays Vermeer, has even said he wished the movie had LESS dialogue. The choice of Scarlett Johansson is perfect, and it's sad to think most people consider the talented delivery of lines to be the barometer of "good acting," because it's rare to see someone brilliantly convey so much emotion and "language" without even talking. I don't know if Johansson is consciously aware how expressive and talented she is with her eyes and face, but it doesn't matter - she's a gem. And it's very important to get the right actors in a movie like this. They wanted Kate Hudson at first, but she backed away at the last minute. What a relief. I think she would have ruined the movie, or at least degraded it to subpar quality. The movie might be boring for those who are too immersed in the culture of babbling. We in America are blunted by talking heads, talking friends, talking and words and more talking. But in the class society of Vermeer's world, where maids are to keep quiet until spoken to, and where people don't babble at each other with any random thought that occurs to them, holding the tongue was a way of life. But if you can transport yourself away from modern culture and enter this movie with an open mind, there's a treasure of beauty and intelligence. The movie will haunt you for days.