Tuesday December 14, 2004

Girl with a Pearl Earring

The real canvases in this quiet film, which imagines the story behind Johannes Vermeer's painting of the same name, are the faces of the characters. Maria Thins (Judy Parfitt), the scheming mother-in-law of the Dutch master (Colin Firth), directs the affairs of a family whose welfare is dependent on the continued patronage of Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson), which in turn requires the continued inspiration and productivity of her son-in-law, while it is simultaneously threatened by the continued fecundity of her daughter Catharina (Essie Davis).

Into the picture (no pun intended :) comes Griet (Scarlett Johansson), the new maid, who arouses the lust of the patron, the jealous suspicion of the wife and children, and the watchful eye of the mother-in-law as she apprehends, almost immediately, the impact this girl is having on the painter. There is a bond between them -- not of lust or even romantic love -- but of kindred artistic spirit. She intuits the impact that cleaning the windows of Vermeer's studio will have on the quality of the light; she sees that a chair is crowding the subject of a portrait and rearranges the scene to make the resulting painting better.

Vermeer takes her on as his assistant and also, secretly, as the subject of a new commission for Van Ruijven in which she models his wife's prized earring. The scene in which the artist pierces her virgin ear is as erotic (in the Greek sense of the word) as anything you'll ever see with fully-dressed actors.

Of all the great faces in this picture, Johansson's is by far the most amazing. (Which you'd know if you've seen Lost In Translation.) How extraordinarily vacant and plain it can be at one moment; how rich and alive at the next, as when Griet's boyfriend Pieter (Cillian Murphy) first coaxes a smile from her.

The lovely thing about this movie is that it keeps its quietness, its modesty. Griet does not wind up in bed with Vermeer; jealous Catharina does no one in with a carving knife. The power remains beneath the surface, waiting for the viewer to discover it -- in this way it is much more like a painting than like a movie, which will remain to its eternal credit.

Roger Ebert's review of the film is spot on -- recommended reading.

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(2004-12-14 06:09:30.0) Permalink Comments [1]