Girl with a Pearl Earring

Starring: Colin Firth, Scarlett Johansson

Release: 2003

Girl with a Pearl Earring is a unique entry on this list, primarily in that the artist represented in the film, Johannes Vermeer (played by Colin Firth), really isn’t the movie’s main character. He’s a key figure to be sure and the film offers an interesting perspective on his work, but the story really revolves around a fictional character named Griet (played by Scarlett Johansson), a maid in Vermeer’s home.

After Griet shows an intelligent appreciation for her employer’s work – unsurprising, given that her father was himself a painter before being blinded and losing the use of one hand in an accident – Vermeer begins to view her as a sort of muse, basing paintings on her daily activities (particularly Woman with a Water Jug, shown below) and requesting her assistance in the mixing of paints. Eventually, the film shows her sitting as the subject of the film’s namesake, the stunning and intimate portrait Girl with a Pearl Earring. The film follows Griet’s journey as she enters into domestic servitude, spars with Vermeer’s wife and daughter, and becomes romantically involved with the local butcher’s apprentice, Pieter.

Although there are moments with Pieter that are light and cheerful, in general Griet’s life is shown to be difficult and often dreary. The film’s canvas expresses this dullness in its color palette – drab whites and monotonous grays are everywhere in Griet’s world. The colors are so unexciting that the one glimpse of Griet’s otherwise continually covered hair – auburn when finally seen – is downright shocking. And while it’s hard to make Johansson look anything other than stunning, even her usually overwhelming beauty is downplayed and almost unnoticeable beneath her omnipresent wimple. Through most of the film, she stares at the ground numbly, rarely speaking and only opening up in the presence of Pieter and Vermeer.

So why would a film in which the artist is merely a side character be featured on this list? Well, it seems to me that a good movie about an artist will give you a greater appreciation for that artist’s work, and – despite the fact that the character Griet and the plot around her is entirely fabricated – this movie made me value a painter who, to be honest, I really hadn’t cared for much before. By placing the viewer in Griet’s world, the film shows just how spectacular Vermeer’s work would have been to his contemporaries. In Vermeer’s studio, bright and lively colors abound, and Griet’s own bleak world (and, in turn, the film) is transformed. In a particularly illuminating scene, Vermeer sends Griet to purchase incredibly expensive lapis to create an almost electric blue paint. Against Johannson’s nearly translucent skin and her gray dress, the blue powder pops out of the screen and elicits a smile from the maid, as certainly as it does for the viewer. In this way, the entire film stands almost as a substitute for Vermeer’s actual canvases. As viewers, we’re placed in the dreary environment of 17^th century Amsterdam, and Vermeer’s work offers a welcome change to those surroundings.

Vermeer excelled at presenting ordinary scenes that told entire stories without any words. Here, the most emotionally resonant relationship – that between Griet and Vermeer – contains almost no dialogue. Johansson and Firth sit together often in silence, exchanging very few words in between numerous glances. As in Vermeer’s work, it is those looks that truly tell the story of this film. It’s what made his work so brilliant, and it’s what makes the film so wonderful. A sincerely symbiotic relationship between the two, where the painter’s work lends so much to the visuals of the film and where the film gives so much back to the source material, is unusual, and it definitely makes this a film worth seeing.

Don't miss the other blog posts in my series on movies about artists!

10 Movies You Should See About Artists:

• #10 - Andrei Rublev
• #9 - Lust for Life
• #8 - Goya's Ghosts
• #7 - Pollock
• #6 - Basquiat
• #4 - The Agony and the Ecstasy