posted by Scene -- @ 2:56 AM

The Girl With the Pearl Earring

If we're being honest with ourselves we can admit that the majority of film reviewers are what we commonly refer to as "geeks". Whether academics or fanboys, we the critics are nonetheless a tribe that enjoys spending countless hours alone in a darkened theatre, eating candy.

As such, we are very prone to screen-crushes. Whether or not we are socially functional (some are, some aren't), whether we date or not, get laid or not, we all develop screen-crushes. Hollywood depends on it. The star system is built on it. The cinematographic process of gazing almost guarantees it. Our fanboy disposition only further seals the deal.

Where am I going with this? I am in love with Scarlett Johansson. I'm not sure how the other critics accomplish their task, but I find it difficult to objectively critique a film when I am so enamoured with the lead star. My judgment gets clouded, and, like millions of straight men around the world when they're around a beautiful woman, I get stupider. I felt like I was enjoying The Girl With the Pearl Earring, I really did. But "enjoying" is such a foggy word. I enjoyed Star Wars: Attack of the Clones as well — another collapse of the critical mind under the weight of fandom.

The movie itself deals with a rift off of fandom, with art and what it does to its human counterparts: those who pay for it, those who make it, those who inspire it, and those who wish to see. And since Johansson plays the titular girl with the pearl earring, Griet, the film's one success may be that we, much like the men in the movie, fall in love with her face.

The film knows Johansson's strengths and uses them with a constant urgency, her peering doe eyes and pouty mouth-breathing underscoring much of the film's song-like composition. Johansson herself seems dumbfounded by the film, mouth open (it is comical when painter Vermeer/Colin Firth urges Griet, "open your mouth", as it has already been open for the majority of the film), wandering into beautiful Vermeer-ishly lit rooms but merely drifting about and staring as if she doesn't know what to do there. As if merely staring at things were the point of the movie.

And staring just might be the point, as the central plot concerns itself with the beauty of Vermeer's canvas. A beauty that is conveyed through said staring; constant staring, forbidden staring, curious staring, nervous staring, while Vermeer himself spends much of the film silent, hiding in shadows and behind corners, staring at those who stare. And while the urgency to stare and to be stared at, to comprehend beauty and the need to feel beautiful or to possess the beautiful, pushes the other characters through their arcs, Vermeer himself always stays hidden. Never do we understand or see his vision, his love, or his passions. When Vermeer’s wife, Catharina/Essie Davis, pleads to know why he paints Griet and not her, Vermeer bellows, “Because you don’t understand!” The problem is, by this point in the movie (the ending), neither do we.

Apparently though, Griet understands. Directing her eyes towards the sky, Vermeer asks her what colors the clouds are. “White,” she says. “No wait”, she corrects herself, “yellow, blue, and gray, those are the colors of the clouds”. Vermeer nods his head sagely, but the meaning of this is just as shadowed as his earlier introduction. Does this mean that she will be his apprentice? That she is the only one who understands his art? That he is falling in love with her?

Abstruse and somewhat awkward signs are given pointing towards the latter. Vermeer, either taken with Griet’s beauty or work-ethic, requests the girl’s help in a number of menial tasks: mixing/grinding paints, fetching supplies, cleaning house. One assumes that this, coupled with the fact that Griet is the controversial subject of Vermeer’s latest portraiture effort, signals, at the very least, attraction. Vermeer, however, has a strange way of showing attraction. When Griet protests her new tasks by asserting that she barely has any free time aside from her regular housekeeping, Vermeer none-to-nicely commands her to “make time.” Thus begins a cycle of commands and responsive pouts, the ultimate expression of which is, of course, Vermeer’s final painting of Griet.

Never consummated, Griet and Vermeer’s relationship is reduced to several scenes of hackneyed sexual tension: Vermeer’s manly hands guiding Griet's feminine as she grinds and stirs his paints (the sexual innuendo of which, just in case you didn’t get it by yourself, is vocalized and made clear by Vermeer’s loathsome patron, Van Ruijven/Tom Wilkenson), or Vermeer asserting to the family that Griet should sleep in his studio, the better for her to scrub it first thing in the morning.

One scene, however, drips with appropriate sexiness. Here, Vermeer pierces the ear of Griet; forcing a steel rod into her porcelain lobe, blood slowly dripping, Johansson’s mouth agape and breathy. Sadly, the subtlety and tenderness of this scene is promptly ruined in the very next as Griet, presumably uncontrollably randy after her ear-piercing experience, runs off to have sex in a barn with Pieter/Cillian Murphy, a suitor whom until this point we were led to believe Griet had absolutely no interest in.

But for all the melodrama and presumably torrid love/hate back-stories, the film is still nonetheless about the painting. And for all its exposition and historical extrapolation, the film finds itself in a rut without any way to end the story except by showing the real work itself. The narrative ends abruptly as we slowly pull-back-to-reveal Vermeer’s masterpiece, presented with documentary earnest and formality. Greeted with the real Griet, all doe eyes and pouting lips, one realizes the one strength of the movie: Griet’s face. And as both a fanboy with a crush and a critic who marvels at visual magic, I must say, I appreciate the casting.

Jef.Catapang