SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.
I admire a good painting, but I go to the movie theater to
see motion pictures. So, I was
skeptical about a film whose focus was an unmoving image. But, this story is
about the people that created the famous painting. If you are a fan of sexual
tension, this film throbs with it as it suggests the possible back story behind
the portrait with the above title by Johannes Vermeer. The director, Peter Webber,
absolutely makes you feel as if you are inhabiting the damp (should I say
fertile?) canal streets of 17th century Delft . I had the urge to buy wooden shoes
after seeing this movie. Scarlett Johansson is perfectly cast as Griet, an
alabaster beauty cowled in a white head cover, her mouth always parted as if
unconsciously and sensually waiting for her sexual hunger to be fed. She is the
maid who has come to work in the Vermeer household containing Vermeer's wife,
mother-in-law, his children and other servants.
Colin Firth does not speak many words as Vermeer. But, he
tells us what he is feeling with his brooding looks that show how he can barely
contain his seething passion for Griet, who he quickly realizes understands the
power of color and light. They are kindred souls in this sense, but their
non-sexual sexual affair can only be realized in displaced ways. He teaches her
how to make paint in a very sensual, tactile scene filled with the colorful
mashing of ingredients and mixing of fluids. He puts his robe over the two of
them, as if under bed covers, as they look into a camera obscura. When she
eventually sits as the subject of the painting, he must pierce her ear so that
she can wear the pearl earring. This scene suggests sexual penetration as he plunges
the needle through her earlobe, spilling the virginal blood. He knows that
their connection is illicit, as is seen when he tells her to buy materials for
his paint, but says that his wife need not know about her errand for him.
The film is filled with sexual displacement and frustration.
Vermeer cannot have Griet, or women like her of a lower order, so he keeps
getting his wife pregnant. But, continues to feel unfulfilled. His wife has
Vermeer as her husband, but she is unable to understand his art, and thus, is
unable to satisfy him. So, she is jealous of Griet. The mother, wanting the
family to financially prosper, basically acts as a madam, urging Griet to get
her son-in-law's creative juices flowing. She procures her daughter's testicular-shaped
pearls for the artistic climax. Tom Wilkinson plays the lascivious patron, who
lusts after the objects of Vermeer's portraits, and almost rapes Grief, but can
in the end only possess the two dimensional female depictions. Right after the
ear piercing scene, Griet runs off to a bawdy bar, seeks the butcher boy who
wants her, and indulges her lust for Vermeer by having sex with the boy.
Vermeer's daughter, filled with Freudian jealousy toward Griet, tries to frame
the maid for stealing. She also smears with mud the white (sexually unsullied?)
hanging sheets that Griet has cleaned, painting her own canvas almost in
rebellion against her father's art.
At one point, Vermeer wants to know why she has
moved the chair next to the female subject that he is painting. Griet says,
"She looked trapped." Giet is trying to be free herself, but it is
difficult given the time in which she is living, and her station in life. Vermeer has the power as employer, and orders her to make
time to make the paint and sit for him. He uses her despite the fact that he puts
her in jeopardy by inciting his wife's jealousy. As the mother-in-law says to
Griet, "You are a fly in his web. We all are."
Griet may not be able to be Vermeer's lover, but she has
enough influence to get him to clear her name of theft and she can refuse to
uncover her head despite Vermeer's demands that she do so. When she sees the
painting, she says to him, "You looked inside me." So, there is a
spiritual penetration, if not a physical one. In the end, he sends her the pearl
earrings, a tribute to how important she was to his art.
Next week’s movie is Touch of Evil.
Lovely words.
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