you can't swing a cat without hitting someone willing to say that girl with a pearl earring is "painterly" and it sure is. the thing about vermeer is his beautiful beautiful light, typically that sort of "light coming sideways from a window onto a domestic scene" thing. and the movie gets it just right. the house is lovely, with these slow beautiful scenes of, well, light coming sideways from a window onto a domestic scene. (though one complaint about the lighting. it's beautiful, but they kind of got carried away with how it looks, i think; it doesn't seem to make sense all the time, like full daylight lighting follows evening light without a whole lot of logic, though it does look nice.)

but beyond that, what a mess. the story is some kind of imagined thing about how vermeer came to paint "girl with a pearl earring" of this lovely young girl and blah de blah yadda yadda, you can guess what kind of stuff it is. one interesting thing, and i guess this is sort of a spoiler, if there's any plot to spoil in this movie, is the way, as in lost in translation, the central relationship is based on barely alluded-to sexual tension that's never realized. it's a little more alluded to here, but in the end, vermeer loves his wife, griet loves her boyfriend, and the painter's uh painterly interest in her is set in contrast to his patron's lechery. it's an interesting question, to wonder how far scarlett johansson can take this thing of looking profound and pretty while maintaining unrealized semi-sexual tension with older men. probably pretty far.

one PS: i'm watching the little "making of" feature that's on the dvd, and someone just said that "when you go back to the paintings as a reader of the book or having seen the film... i think the story brings them a kind of humanity." yeah right. some of the loveliest paintings ever done of everyday life need your mediocre movie to bring them "humanity".

September 23, 2004 09:54 PM
Categories: movies
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