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You looked inside me.
Griet to Vermeer after seeing her portrait, Girl with a Pearl Earring

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Girl With A Pearl Earring

Movie Review

2003 | PG-13
Reviewed ?

I dimly recall reading this book a few years back, but I can’t say it made any lasting impression on me. In the years since I read it, the plot has gotten mixed up in my head with other novels set in that general time and place, particularly Gregory Maguire’s excellent Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. So, when I popped this movie in and sat down to watch, I was fortunate enough to be able to view the story with fresh eyes.

The story revolves around Griet, a quiet young maid in the house of Johannes Vermeer, the Dutch painter. Despite her lack of formal education, Griet is a sensitive, observant young woman, with a natural artist’s eye. Vermeer himself takes an interest in the girl, noticing her talent and gently nurturing it. As the unlikely relationship between the artist and his servant grows, it becomes the backdrop for a series of events that will eventually lead to the creation of one of Vermeer’s most famous paintings, the haunting portrait of a “Girl with a Pearl Earring.”

The relationship between Vermeer and Griet is chaste and gentle, yet strangely intense. Griet, torn between innocent fascination with the brooding painter and a more promising relationship with a young butcher, is wise enough to keep her place, yet daring enough to move a prop in one of her master’s paintings because she knows the painting would look better without it. The bond between the two is more artistic than romantic, a shared appreciation for the language of light and color.

No one else in the story besides these two characters has a true understanding of art, and that lack of insight is the cause of most of the drama. Vermeer’s wife, constantly pregnant and emotionally neglected by her husband, cannot understand that his interest in the pretty young maid is artistic, not romantic; the first words that fall from her lips when she sees the finished portrait of Griet are simultaneously insightful and ignorant. One of her young daughters, sensing the tension in the house, pins her own resentment on Griet, and schemes to make her life miserable. The lecherous Van Ruijven (played by the ubiquitous Tom Wilkinson), Vermeer’s patron, does have some appreciation for art and beauty, but this is more an extension of his own baser lusts; he uses Vermeer’s talent as a way to prey on young women. Vermeer himself, the classic misunderstood genius, broods with the simmering angst that is Colin Firth’s trademark. Perhaps he broods a little too well; with the shoulder-length hair and silent, intense stares, I was occasionally reminded of Constantine Maroulis, the American Idol reject famed for his sexy smoulder.

Visually, this movie is a beautiful tribute to Vermeer, with its quiet shots of domestic life and fine appreciation of light and color. Dramatically, however, it sometimes falls just a teensy bit flat, mostly due to Scarlett Johansson’s hit-and-miss performance as Griet. Her pale looks, strongly reminiscent of a young Johanna ter Steege, suit the part well; she’s not quite a spitting image of the girl in the portrait, but she comes close enough. Performance-wise, she lacks a necessary subtlety—the nervous gasps were a little too loud, the shyness a little too pronounced, the long and silent stares occasionally empty when they should have been full of meaning. Despite being the main character, quiet Griet has very few spoken lines; this turns out to be a blessing, as Johansson’s put-on British accent is horribly stilted in comparison with her co-stars’. To be fair, however, Johansson’s performance is merely mildly lacking rather than wholly bad, and only occasionally detracts from the dramatic impact of the movie’s scenes.

More so than anything else in the film, however, it is the final image that burns itself onto your brain: the famous painting itself, which is only glimpsed throughout the rest of the movie. In that long final shot, we see that the girl in the painting really is Griet—the parted lips, the beseeching eyes, the look of helpless, silent longing. It is good that they saved that image until the very end, because it absolutely takes your breath away. Never mind the slight differences in feature between the modern actress and the antique model; as Griet says to Vermeer when she first sees the portrait herself, “You looked inside me.”

Ratings

• Excellent
• Memorable
• Average
• Meh
• Stupid
• Terrible

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