Girl with a Pearl Earring

Girl with a Pearl Earring-720P

Girl with a Pearl Earring-480P

♡

This is definitely an art film. Beautiful cinematography, but not much plot. I think having read the book prior to seeing the movie spoiled it for me. There were so many touching parts of the book, which were omitted and I think vital to understanding the main characters and the time period. This movie needed much more character development to gain my attention. Other than the beautiful costumes and scenery, I was quite bored. I normally like Johansson as an actress, but found her quite annoying in this movie. Griet was portrayed to be too insipid. Who wants to watch an insipid main character for 2 hours? Also, annoying were the multiple accents in the movie. This movie needed a lot more consistency. I feel this was a poor adaption of the book. I can only hope someday someone will create a better movie of it.

Despite the fact that considerable technical skill went into the recreating of Vermeer's lighting, there is virtually no evidence of Vermeer the painter in GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING. Instead of exploring the work of this genius, the master is trivialized with a dull, uninspired melodramatic story. That one should spent the length of a feature film considering the superficialities of the relationship between Johannes Vermeer and his wife, his maid, and his patron is evidence to me that, despite all of our electricity, we are living in a truly dark age. In 1977, a Dutch director, Jos Stelling, made a film, unjustly ignored, about Rembrandt. His work, REMBRANDT FECITE 1669, re-created more than the artist's lighting, he re-created the man's soul. The camera moved in accordance with the painter's sensibilities, the story moved similarly. This film was a meditation on the man's work, a true attempt to re-create the time in which he lived. Vermeer deserved but has not received the same treatment. The fundamental problem with GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING lies in its presumption that Vermeer's personal genius had something to do with the man - as a husband, a lover, a son-in-law, or whatever the hell else he was. What is missing entirely is that Vermeer had a talent and sensibility for capturing the most ineffable qualities of life - his was a gift of observation, not participation. What happened in the artist's personal dramas is completely irrelevant to the more lasting sensation of his method of observing. It should be about how he saw things, not what actually happened.

It's hard to think up ideas for novels. So hard that eventually you make a novel that's a fictional story about a painting. When it gets down to that, it's sad, but then when they make a movie about it is the lowest tier. That's the case with Girl with a Pearl Earring, an insanely overly dramatic version of Tracy Chevalier's supposedly acclaimed novel. The results by this half-baked script by Olivia Hetreed are unintentionally hilarious. I mean this, I was almost rolling on the floor with laughter during this movie. The script here is, as I said before, laughably bad. Every other shot where there's dialogue (which is extremely scarce) someone's spewing some sort of pithy quote or another. And they aren't the type that can be used as signatures on message boards, they're just blatantly scripted and worthless. Another example of this script's atrocity is when people look at paintings. When Griet (Scarlett Johansson) sees a painting of her, she doesn't say something like "It's beautiful". She doesn't even say something like "It brings out my eyes." She actually says "You saw right through me!" I didn't know dialogue could get this bad, but obviously it can. Every single character overacts so much they deserve to have their own soap opera. In fact, Girl with a Pearl Earring is basically a 90 minute long soap opera set in the 17th century. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if ABC picked it up for next season. Anyway, Johansson, brilliant in Ghost World, The Man Who Wasn't There and Lost in Translation, but here she goes for a "subtle" performance, and, to tell the truth, it's horrible. She is constantly mugging to the camera by not being able to keep her face still for even a seocnd, and she can't accurately portray a servant from that time. Colin Firth, playing artist Johannes Vermeer, seems to understand the time period more, but when not yelling for no particular reason, just doesn't work. Every other small character in this underdeveloped film goes for the way-too-loud method of acting and just had me cracking up. I saw Girl with a Pearl Earring about a week before the Oscars, for which it had three nominations. It did, in fact, have good cinematography, but the costumes seemed to be derived from history books and looked pretty cheesy. I'm not very familiar with art direction, so I can't comment on that, but thankfully it wasn't nominated for anything sound-related. Whenever people talk offscreen, it's obvious that those people are just in a recording booth, talking into microphones. Whatever authenticity there was disappeared then. The music score were pretty good, albeit repetitive. Because of the mix of cinematography and music, GWAPE wasn't torturous to sit through, but just because I survived it doesn't make it a good movie. My rating: 3/10 Rated PG-13 for some sexual content.

I recently read the book Girl with a Pearl Earring and I was very impressed by the way Tracy Chevalier gave life and credibility to her portrait of Griet and the Dutch painter Vermeer. Thus, it was with high expectations that I bought the film and watched it. I was very disappointed by the film and have given some thought to the reason why it simply does not work. Firstly, it seems to me that the film is too dependent on the book. It seems to me that viewers who have not read the book will wonder what it is all about. Since the book has so many "in-betweens", some sort of explanation about the characters and the plot seems essential. It seems to me that the director relied too much on the facial expressions of the leading actors to convey not only emotions but also crucial events in the plot. This leads me to the second point of the criticism. I think the main problem with the film is exactly the characterisation. Colin Firth and Scarlett Johanson do not strike me as credible characters they do not literally "jump from the screen" as they did indeed jump from the page. Firths body language is moody and closed and it comes across as if he is sulking all the way through the movie rather than enveloped and passionate about his work. Scarlett Johansen also fails to convey the intelligence and dormant potential of the maid Griet. It is not enough to just open and close your mouth 1000 times when we are given no other clues to what ís going on. I do not think however that this is the fault of the actors - it must mean that something is missing in the direction and the script - there seems to be too little material for the actors in which to invest and bring out the characters. Too much material is only suggested and still relies upon the viewer having read the book and being able to fill in the blanks and fill in the emotions in those vacant expressions of Scarlett and Colin. Some of the plot changes also puzzled me. Why does Vermeer pierce both her ears when she did one of them herself in the book. I thought this was a very powerful way of showing Vermeers dedication as well as his passion for the art which is uncomprising as well as a little cruel. An adaptation has to be able to stand alone and this film certainly does not achieve this. 3/10

Beautifully filmed piece of boring crap. If they had eliminated 30 or 40 of the close-ups of Colin Firth or Scarlett Johansson looking soulful and filled with angst, the film would have been shorter by half an hour. That's really all I have to say, but I'm told I need ten more lines. So please skip the rest of this. We saw two movies today. "Girl with a Pearl Earring" and "Something's Gotta Give." "Something's Gotta Give" was wonderful. This was not. It had wonderful art direction, but that doesn't make up for the 17th Century Sominex soap opera we had to endure.

The director of this film seems to believe that having a passing acquaintance with Vermeer's lighting style (or knowing a Director of Photography who does) is sufficient substitute for narrative, nuance, characterisation, composition or or any other kind of cohesive idea at all. Unfortunately it is not. Some of the images are pretty but none so beautiful, poignant or so suggestive of inner meaning as Vermeer's original which closes the film. The wait isn't worth it. The script and direction are utterly inept. Hopeless. Some points to the Art Department and a glimmer of promise in the performance of Scarlett Johansonn, which almost transcends the total lack of direction. See LOST IN TRANSLATION to see what this extraordinary young talent is capable of in the hands of a director who knows what she is about. Otherwise, visit an art gallery or read the book rather than endure this tedious botch.

After being assaulted by the Vermeer-painting cover of 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' in Barnes and Noble for months after it was released, I finally acquiesced and bought a copy. The concept of the novel is a fictional exploration of the creation of that Vermeer classic, and suggests that the model is Grit; a young girl in 1600's Holland whose family falls on hard times after her father is blinded, so she is sent to work for the family of Johannes Vermeer, the master painter. She does the back breaking work for the family and deals with the many difficult children and the mistress of the house, but then eventually strikes up a friendship with and develops romantic feelings for Vermeer, culminating with her posing for the painting. While the story is obviously not true, I find the concept of theorizing about the origination of great works of art intriguing, so I really enjoyed the book. Unfortunately, the film 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' directed by Peter Webber wasn't as enjoyable. The film was admitted beautiful, particularly the cinematography. There were some beautifully framed shots that looked like they would have inspired any of Vermeer's Baroque contemporaries. I found the performances to be hollow and boring (someone needs to convince me sometime that Scarlett Johansson is anything but vapid) and there was absolutely none of the emotion conveyed in the film that was so pervasive and almost tangible in the book. It takes a special film to coast on its merits merely by looking pretty, but 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' is not one of them. While I encourage the study (albeit fictionalized) of great artists, this is just too boring of a representation. 4/10, and only for its cinematography and lighting. --Shelly