Girl with a Pearl Earring
"The pictures held me captive."
This is the experience of many among the throngs of people who visit exhibitions of Dutch art. It's very inconvenient, as it causes long queues. But a similar experience, complete with the hushed quiet characteristic of art galleries, is now available at a cinema near you.
Girl with a Pearl Earring, starring Scarlett Johannson and Colin Firth, is a stunningly picturesque film. It is based on Tracy Chevalier's best-selling novel, which in turn is based on the famous painting by Johannes Vermeer, dated around 1665.
Griet (Johannson) is an illiterate servant in the household of Vermeer (Firth) who catches her master's eye when she demonstrates an innate understanding of art that is woefully lacking in his permanently pregnant wife. The sensual tension that develops is perhaps typical of contemporary film. But what gives this film a greater coherence is the visual impact of the play of light.
It is in this sense, if in little else, that the film is true to Vermeer. For Vermeer's insight into the effect of light accounts for much of his genius and it's this that inspired a later generation of impressionist painters, including his fellow Dutchman, Van Gogh. The same insight animates this film. Indeed, by using light to create drama, Vermeer anticipates every cinematographer and every poignant screen 'moment'. Milk is pouring, and keeps pouring, from the maid's jug. A servant girl is turning her head towards you with a look of suspense in her eyes.
Parallels can be drawn, however tentatively, between Vermeer's work and the predominantly Calvinistic milieu of the 17th-century Netherlands in which he lived. Chief among these is the emphasis on the sanctity, dignity and calling of ordinary people in their everyday lives, both in the home and in the workplace. From a belief in God's sovereignty sprang the conviction that no sphere of life, not even the domestic, was beyond the ennobling reach of common grace.
Perhaps this is what accounts more plausibly for the pearl earring on the servant girl than the one given in the film. But that is for you to decide. In the meantime, 'going to the pictures', as our grandparents used to call it, has taken on a new meaning. Before you go, prepare to meet beauty, and then let its source take you captive.
Peter Heslam
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