9 Reviews from the Land of JBU Cinema: "Girl With A Pearl Earring"

Written for various prompts in and out of my Cinema classes at John Brown this past semester, these reviews/analyses seemed to warrant inclusion here.

A languidly paced but quietly fascinating film, “Girl With A Pearl Earring” is a much more successful exercise in restrained temptation/attraction than all of Stephanie Meyers’ “Twilight” films and novels combined. I found its conclusion to be realistic, even if the motivations of the characters are somewhat unclear by today’s standards. I imagine, however, that the eponymous pearl earrings were seen as much more than simply adornment – they were a status symbol, and bestowed upon a lowly servant girl rather than the mistress of a household they represented the crossing of a now-antiquated but powerful societal line.

Those familiar with the works of Johannes Vermeer (I confess I am not) will no doubt recognize the most important location in the film, his private studio, as the setting for many of his more famous pieces. It is, of course, painstakingly recreated here, but it is not primarily the replication of image or space that cements for us the sensation of inclusion in a living version of Vermeer’s paintings. Rather, it was for me the careful use of lighting, especially within such key areas as the studio and such key scenes as the completion of Vermeer’s painting of Griet.

I know from shooting emulations of famous photographs for Holland’s “Introduction to Photography” course that exact replication of lighting in any situation is very difficult to achieve. The angle of lighting has to be right. If you’re working in color, the light has to be of the correct warmth and hue, and there can’t be too much or too little of it. In this film, director Peter Webber nails all of the above, especially the element of diffusion in the light that Vermeer painted. All of the works of his that I’ve seen feature very soft lighting. Shadows exist, but they are not often sharply defined or clearly bounded. The overall tone is hazy and cool – comfortable, and almost sleepy. It is Webber’s particular stroke of genius to shoot the entire film this way. The image appears softened, and this is not simply a product of enlarging the small format of the mp4 file I viewed. In this way, we get the sense that the whole movie is, in fact, one big Vermeer painting, and that we, like Griet, are little pieces of his artistic vision.