• Post category:Movies
  • Post last modified:November 15, 2018

Girl With a Pearl Earring

BEAUTY INSPIRES OBSESSION.

In the 1660s, a young girl called Griet (Scarlett Johansson) is employed in the household of painter Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth); she inspires him for his greatest work. There isn’t much we know about Vermeer, so this story takes liberties but few will mind. The script, detailing Vermeer’s work on “Girl With a Pearl Earring” and Griet’s problematic presence in the household, is simple, but this directing debut still has a hypnotic style (aided by the music) and cinematography that makes the film look like it was painted by Vermeer. Johansson leads the cast, worth a look as the carefully treading maid. 

2003-Britain-Luxembourg. 99 min. Color. Widescreen. Produced by Andy Paterson, Anand Tucker. Directed by Peter Webber. Screenplay: Olivia Hetreed. Novel: Tracy Chevalier. Cinematography: Eduardo Serra. Music: Alexandre Desplat. Cast: Colin Firth (Johannes Vermeer), Scarlett Johansson (Griet), Tom Wilkinson (Pieter Van Ruijven), Judy Parfitt, Cillian Murphy, Essie Davis.

Trivia: Mike Newell was allegedly considered for directing duties; Kate Hudson and Ralph Fiennes for the two leads.

European Film Awards: Best Cinematographer.

Last word: “The scene that did it to me was the piercing, the ear piercing. Because I thought, ‘You know what? This is not the film I thought it was when I started to read it. This has got a fantastic dark undertone; it’s got an obsessive romantic relation at this heart of it. This cruelty, this passion, and there’s interesting stuff about the relationship with money and art. It’s about power, it’s about sex, it’s about a whole bunch of stuff.’ And I thought that was a film I could make. …What I was scared of is ending up with something that was like ‘Masterpiece Theatre’, [that] very polite Sunday evening BBC kind of thing, and I [was] determined to make something quite different from that and the material was there to do it with.” (Webber, IGN)

 

IMDb

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