mrmut This is phenomenal movie about art and artistic inspiration. It is an unusual view of one of the most iconic paintings ever made.The story is fantastic, and the movie shows the realism of life in that era very well. The grade 8 is very high in my world, and the only reason it is not 9 is further lack of realism (given it is historic movie).The acting in the movie is stunning, and dare I say - the model for the painting in the movie is actually prettier than the original painting itself.NOTE: Watch this only if you can get it in very high quality. BluRay or higher. The reason for that is fantastic lighting. Entine movie was recorded as if Vermeer painted it.

chaos-rampant Okay, this is really really worth it if you tune the eye a certain way. I was surprised because the film is not by a master filmmaker, at least going by reputation, and yet here he equals some of my most cherished work.Yes as you have heard the film is shot to resemble Vermeer's own paintings, full of warm light and chiseled pose. And yes there is a rather thinly veiled allegory about sex that culminates with the young maid having her ears pierced by the master painter. But that is uninteresting compared to the richness herein.Perceptive viewers will of course note that exactly these items, the search for a perfect illusion and allegory in the paintings, are transferred in the film itself to the lecherous patron of Vermeer who remains oblivious to the subtle riches of the work he commissions. No, we'll have to look past a mere aesthetic appreciation here.About Vermeer, you should know that he was from the Dutch school that stood opposite to the luxurious Italian. Its eye came from then modern cartography, not religion. Light came not from god but emanated from the things themselves interlocked and reflecting in space. It painted an ordinary world, not mythic or historic narrative. (Rembrandt being an exception)Moreover that at around his time, science was beginning to set down the laws of celestial mechanics, fixing the skies merely at a greater distance. In this light Vermeer would appear 'realistic', when in retrospect, in Proust's eyes he appeared transcendent. It helps that relativistic physics began to change that worldview, showing that the fixing collapses a more transcendent flow. (there's a heck of a lot more to say about a quantum sense of perception)Now I have no way of knowing how Vermeer intended his work, moreover it's beside the point. I have this film here that captivates and uses him as anchor. It works for me not in the way that scholars of painting harp about what is placed where in the frame or the brilliance of color, fixing dull eyes on mechanical detail. It does for the same reason that Vermeer pops up in Proust's writings on memory—it captures edges of that transcendent time that hides from the eyes and yet runs as a pulse through the spectacle, a similar view as that carved by Japanese painters of Vermeer's time in their (similarly commissioned by rich merchants) travelogues of ordinary life, there in a Buddhist context.Now the film is shot from the start to emulate Vermeer so we don't have some transition to a new light that would denote it is all in fact seen from her eyes; nevermind that, it is her visual diary. And her entry in the household kicks off the sexual allegory when it is really about discovery and reflection of a different sort beneath that. Bergman and Trier would tie the reflection to some absent god, propping the same blunt, religious view they would like to challenge.No we have here a much more rare mastery that I'd expect from the likes of Tarkvosky, what Ruiz tried to do in his Proust film.Look for the scene, the narrative anchor here, where Vermeer asks the girl to look out the window at the color of the clouds. At first it is white, fixed as if by conditioned reflex, but the more she looks the more nuance and color appear, a subtler play of reflection that is everywhere around us if we look for it.The effort is to bring unreflective life into gradual focus, to reflect on lost time, lost only because we are unmindful to it, because dust settles on mirrors as the Japanese would meditate on it. We have this play with unconcealment in several different ways—with her torn blouse seen through foggy glass, a pan in a room that reveals unseen observers in the frame.What does this mean, to unconceal ?For the filmmaker, it means to show beneath the obvious (comissioned) narrative a more expansive perceptive world that at every moment subtends it. Taken further, it is to stop chasing the narrative significance in the narrative and turn the eye to things as they appear, to know that we are doing the concealing by not paying attention to the lush weave.This not some theoretical satisfaction removed from things, it is what the Buddhists know as the daily practice of mindfulness. It is to occupy the middle position that things around us are not exclusively intended for us, trinkets to our drama, nor for anything else other than a gaze such as this, since that is where they appear, painting materials by which the world paints itself into being.In the end, as the girl leaves the house she stops to exchange glances with the other maid sweeping the floor; it's all in this arresting of flow by the eye (at a later point this scene will be memory) that neither stops time nor has no effect on it, that is only possible by pausing on your way out, by looking instead of just going. What marvel! One of the most poignant scenes in film.Something to meditate upon.

SnoopyStyle Griet (Scarlett Johansson) is a peasant maid working in the house of painter Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth). She becomes his talented assistant, and the model for one of his most famous works. Also starring such greats actors as Tom Wilkinson and Cillian Murphy.This movie is based on a fictional story derived from the Dutch masterpiece painting called Girl with a Pearl Earring. Like the painting, this is really pretty. The set and the costumes are all beautifully created reminiscent of the paintings. Every chance he gets, director Peter Webber frames the movie as a painting. I see the idea behind the style, but inevitably it restraints the picture from anything more than 2 dimensional portraits.Scarlett's reserved performance siphons most of the passion from this film. It's obvious they're trying to allude to an overall sense of restricted sexuality. But it just takes too long to get the tension going. A quicker faster emotional speed is required for the first half.

wilson trivino At the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia (High dot o.r.g) a new exhibit has opened up that runs through September 29, 2013 entitled the "Girl with a Pearl Earring". After some research I found out that this Johannes Vermeer painting became part of the popular lore after this movie came out based on the book by Tracy Chevalier. The movie is a fictional tale but it puts the painting in the right context of life in the 17th century. Staring Scarlett Johansson as the seventeen year old Griet, the subject of the painting, the story is of lost innocence and the passion of an artist working on capture natural beauty. This movie is a perfect companion to the exhibit or to anyone who wants to watch a good tale of a well known portrait. In 2012 the Girl with a Pearl exhibit was the highest viewed show in the world when it stopped in Tokyo. As part of the exhibit, the High Museum will have a showing of the movie, of which the attendees can check out the painting for themselves.