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January 23, 2004 > Arts & Entertainment > ‘Earring’ dazzles with rich visuals and performances

‘Earring’ dazzles with rich visuals and performances

By Raj Wahi | Thresher staff

Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring is probably the only novel I’ve read that practically demanded a film adaptation. Chevalier’s story, a “what-if” scenario in which a fictional maid named Griet serves as Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer’s assistant, apprentice and muse during the creation of the titular painting, is so sumptuous and intimate that we find ourselves wanting to watch everything unfold across the characters’ faces.

As Scarlett Johansson proved earlier this year in Lost in Translation, sometimes a face can communicate more effectively than words. Not surprisingly, Johansson plays Griet in director Peter Webber’s and screenwriter Olivia Hetreed’s interpretation of Girl with a Pearl Earring.

At the beginning of the movie, Griet has just been hired in the Vermeer household, where she quickly learns that the family she’s working for is more than a little dysfunctional. Vermeer himself (Bridget Jones’s Diary’s Colin Firth) is a brooding, brusque man for whom art is both a profession and an escape. His mother-in-law (Ever After’s Judy Parfitt) is the unambiguous head of the household and delights in making others squirm in her presence. Vermeer’s wife Catharina (The Matrix Reloaded’s Essie Davis) is obviously jealous of Griet, but for reasons more subtle than we initially suspect.

Further complicating matters is Vermeer’s lecherous patron, van Ruijven (In the Bedroom’s Tom Wilkinson), who makes no secret of his lust for Griet; Vermeer’s daughter Cornelia (The Others’ Alakina Mann), who is determined to make trouble for the new maid; and Pieter (28 Days Later’s Cillian Murphy), the butcher’s son, with whom Griet shares a muted, uncertain attraction.

It is apparent from the start that Griet will be walking on eggshells for most of the movie, because one of her duties is to clean Vermeer’s studio, where no one else — not even Catharina — is allowed to go. Later, when Griet and Vermeer finally meet, they find they are attracted to each other — not just sexually (although that component is evident in every smoldering glance they exchange), but also in the sense that they both understand art. Eventually we realize it is awareness of the latter connection, far more than sexual or material jealousy, that makes Catharina hate Griet so deeply.

The first thing people will notice about Girl with a Pearl Earring is what a gorgeous film it is. Eduardo Serra’s cinematography is richly colorful and intimate, yet it also captures the claustrophobia of Griet’s nerve-wracking life among the Vermeers. Alexandre Desplat’s score has a similar feel. The orchestrations are lush and warm, even as the mournful melody keeps us subtly unsettled.

The most impressive achievement in the film, though, is Johansson’s sensitive, quiet performance as Griet. The supporting performances — especially Davis as the insecure Catharina and Firth as the enigmatic painter — are uniformly good, but the success of the story depends critically on the believability of Johansson’s portrayal. Thankfully, she delivers.

It is worth noting that in addition to having relatively few lines, Griet’s low position on the social ladder necessitates that Johansson limit her movements to the dozen or so gestures in a maid’s repertoire — casting her eyes down, bowing her head, curtseying, all accompanied by the wide eyes and trembling and hands that arise from Griet’s natural timidity. This means Johansson is required to rely heavily on facial expressions, a restriction that somehow never prevents her from communicating to us exactly what Griet is feeling and thinking.

In one sequence, Griet surreptitiously removes a chair from the still life Vermeer has been painting, quickly leaves the room and comes back the next morning to see if the painter has implemented her silent suggestion. Johansson’s face during this scene is a fascinating mixture of timidity and determination: She isn’t sure whether Vermeer will be angry at her presumption, but she knows she’s right about that chair.

Despite its lean 99-minute running time and sparse dialogue, this movie explores an amazing number of issues and ideas; sexual politics, domestic power struggles, jealousy, poverty and, of course, the process of painting are all astutely observed here. Yet Girl with a Pearl Earring isn’t ultimately “about” any of these things. Nor is it about Vermeer, whose role in the narrative is primarily catalytic. The story is compelling because it keeps its focus on the seemingly ordinary Griet, whose brief immersion in the world of a painter gives her an outlet for feelings and ideas she might otherwise never have known she had. The film’s greatest pleasure is that we finally see what she manages to do with the cards she’s been dealt, and how she manages, in a way, to be an artist in her own right.

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