Because I saw Girl With a Pearl Earring, and it has literally changed my life. This hasn't happened since The Godfather. I kid you not, I have watched GWAPE three times in two days, not including obsessive Googling and Youtube-ing. It's even more fascinating to me, because I studied all this last year, in AP Euro and in humanities. Vermeer was one of my favorites-I liked him even better than Rembrandt and almost as much as Nattier.
I thought I'd like to share my thoughts on it (by "share my thoughts" I mean "dispel the obsession"). I am no movie critic, however, so this will all be strictly from a layman's perspective; I shan't try for any brilliant piece of analysis or judgement.
Basically, its based on the fictionalized life of Johannes Vermeer, the creator of the famous Dutch painting, Girl With a Pearl Earring. You know, the one of the light-skinned girl with parted ruby lips and large, wideset eyes. She is wearing, naturally, heavy pearl earrings and a blue and yellow scarf wrapped demurely about her head, which turns to face the viewer. It is although she asks "yes? Did you call?", for although she looks at you, her shoulders are facing away-it is as though we have interrupted her.
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| Girl With a Pearl Earring, by Johannes Vermeer, 1665 |
That's the girl, Griet-quiet, unrefined, with clear, intelligent eyes and a high forehead. She is the focus of the story, this mysterious woman-child. The movie begins in her home, and we are led through the halls until we come upon the kitchen, where Griet is silently cutting and arranging vegetables. It is with exquisite grace that our Griet slices carrot, beetroot, onion, and arranges them carefully in a bowl. She is called by her mother to her father's side, up the rickety stairs, where she grasps the old man's hands. Her father, we deduce, was formerly a painter. Until, that is, by some tragedy, he had lost his sight and now poor Griet must work as a maid in the house of Johannes Vermeer.
She does so, and befriends an initially stern Tanake, head of the Vermeer household, and meets her mistress, the wonderfully vain and jealous Catharina Vermeer, Madame her mother, and the Vermeer children. Johannes himself is still an enigma, a mysterious figure we know only from the voice that floats through the door.
We catch our first glimpse of Johannes at Catharina's bedside, after the birth of his son. We can see that he is tall and slender, with brown hair that falls to his shoulders, but we must wait until the feast to meet him. That feast celebrates both the birth of his son and the unveiling of his latest work, a commission by Pieter Van Ruijven. We had met Van merely minutes before, when Griet was sent with a note informing the mustachioed patron of the painting's completion. The feast was a success, in more ways than one. Johannes, we notice, is a handsome man and, like Griet, very quiet. Catharina, fashionably pale, with lips of vermillion, sits by Van Ruijven's side, fawning.
Gradually, we fall into the patterns of life here; scrubbing, cooking, shopping at the market...
Good lord, I have forgotten Pieter, the butcher's apprentice? Assistant? Anyhow he works with a butcher and he is smitten with our Griet just as soon as those piercing blue eyes fall on her.
There, I suppose that's enough background. As you have probably guessed, there is a love triangle of sorts between Pieter, Griet, and Johannes. But it's not what you think. It's hard to say if Griet really loves either of the two, and Pieter is the only one whose love we can be sure about.
Griet's sensitivity and natural intelligence and artistic potential endear her to the quiet artist. They are kindred spirits. She grows fascinated with his world-painting, musing, composing. It is difficult to tell, however, if this translates into a fascination with Johannes the man, as opposed to Johannes the painter. With Johannes it is much easier-she is his intellectual equal, and her yearns for her on an intellectual level. She alone understands his work, his passion, and though those, perhaps she understands him. It's not quite lust, and neither have allowed any sort of love to truly grow between them. Probably because of the strict hierarchy of their day, and because of their respective honor codes, as well as that damn Catharina.
Just kidding. I love her-she is so perfectly irritating. She is petulant, sensuous, and empty-headed. Whoever played her deserves all the praise in the world.
But you can see that however impressed Griet is with Johannes, called Jon (Yahn), he is equally so with her. He called for her to fetch him some pigments from the apothecary, and she stands as the man measure them for her, smiling to herself, completely rapt. They talk, and share the pleasure of art, but rarely touch. This makes every brush of fingers, every look, so, so intimate. It is not a forbidden love, but a hushed, unspoken desire.
But of course, things get even more complicated without Pieter. Van Ruijven wants her. He wants her to sit with him in his next commission for Jon. Master Ruijven had caused an uproar some years earlier, when he requested that another of Johannes' maids sit with him: he bedded her, and she bore his child. The very idea enrages Johannes so that when Van asks for Griet, he bolts upright, pushing back his chair with a furious scrape. This can hardly fail to escape the notice of Catharina and her mother, who had long been aware of his growing absorbtion with the out lovely Griet.
A compromise is reached: Johannes will paint a "merry scene" with Van Ruijven, and one of Griet. But, as Madame insists, Catharina must. not. know.
Johannes examines her face, and his face, formerly cold and reserved, is warm. His eyes are tender, and his lips tremble as he instructs her. Later, he asks her to fold back her white cap that hides her hair from the world. Some Dutch girls do not show their hair until marriage. But it is not enough; too much of her face is still hidden, so, naturally, Jon asks her to remove it. Our Griet refuses. Jon sends her to the storeroom to swap her cap for a blue and yellow bit of cloth. We watch as Griet unties the crisp white bonnet and unwinds her coppery hair (she says earlier to Pieter that it is brown, but lez be real). We are not alone in our observation, for the camera cuts to the door, where Johannes stands, half hidden by the door frame. His eyes burn, and his face is unhappy.
Griet's hair falls in curls around her face, softening her cheekbones and her sharp chin. As she turns, her breath catches-she has seen Johannes at last. Slowly, she raises her eyes and they lock gazes. For a moment. Then he turns away and walks off, heels clacking.
Sexual tension at an all time high.
Let's skip to the scene when she pierces her ears. She was reluctant to wear Catharina's pearls, to say the least, but Madame and Johannes insisted.
"You do it" she says, and Jon takes the needle from her wordlessly and holds it in a candle flame. Then, cloth in hand, he steps to her side and kneels down next to her. Resting a hand on one shoulder and steadying the other on the other, he plunges the needle through her earlobe. Griet's body tenses and she gasps, frowning, as a ruby droplet forms and falls. Jon wipes it, and then, in the same motion, rubs away her tear with his thumb. His thumb, as though of its own accord, caresses her check, her lower lip. She turns to look at him. It would be so easy, then, for one to seduce the other, or for any sort of forbidden loving to happen. We expect it. We know it will happen.
Only it doesnt. It's strictly business. The painting is finished in due course and Catharina, naturally, finds out. That was unpleasant.
This is getting too long. I'll revisit this another day, when I am less emotionally drained.
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