Product Description

Holland 1665. 17 year old griet works to support her family as a maid in the house of johannes bermeer where she attracts the painters attention. Master van ruijven senses intimacy between them & contrives a commission for vermeer to paint griet alone. The result will be one of the greatest paintings ever created. Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 02/15/2005 Starring: Colin Firth Tom Wilkinson Run time: 100 minutes Rating: Pg13

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3860 in DVD
• Brand: Lions Gate
• Released on: 2004-05-04
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 100 minutes

Amazon.com
You wouldn't think a movie could look like a Vermeer painting, but Girl with a Pearl Earring is filmed with an amazing range of luminous glows that evoke the Dutch artist's masterworks. Of course, it helps that much of the movie centers on Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation, Ghost World), whose creamy skin and full lips have a luminosity of their own. Johansson plays Griet, a maid in the household of Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth, Bridget Jones' Diary, Fever Pitch), who finds herself in a web of jealousy, artistic inspiration, and social machinations. Though the pace is slow, Girl with a Pearl Earring genuinely conveys some sense of an artist's process, as well as offering many chaste yet sensual moments between Firth and Johansson. Also featuring Essie Davis as Vermeer's bitter wife and Tom Wilkinson (In the Bedroom) as a wealthy patron with eyes for Griet. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
A slow, attentive movie about a painter and his model demands the kind of patience that moviegoers, especially in this hectic season, may feel reluctant to supply. But Peter Webber's reworking of Tracy Chevalier's novel is worth staying with: it casts a heavy spell as it unfolds the tale of Griet (Scarlett Johansson), a maid newly arrived in the house of Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth). The year is 1665, and the period reconstruction, for those who are aroused by such things, is-apart from a few modern lines of dialogue-formidably detailed. The danger with such beautifying efforts is that cinema will turn into a branch of taxidermy, and what keeps Webber's movie alive is the tenseness of the setup (will this girl stay in the artist's household, and, if so, will she become his lover or his muse?), and, above all, the presence of Johansson. She is often wordless and close to plain onscreen, but wait for the ardor with which she can summon a closeup and bloom under its gaze; this is her film, not Vermeer's, all the way.-A.L. (12/15/03) -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Defective discs 2 out of 2
I received two copies of this DVD, one from Amazon and one from a different source. both DVDs had the same problem.
About 10 minutes into the movie the picels started breaking up and a little while later, the movie just froze.
Tried it on different players and computers and still no joy.
Had to get refunds on both.

Must be a manufacturing glitch.

REALLY SLOW! REALLY BORING!
obviously all the people that gave this movie 4-5 stars were asked to write positive reviews or read the book. this movie had so many wholes in it that i couldnt wait for it to end. the script was probably only two pages of diologue. you could literally watch this movie while cleaning the kitchen and doing the dishes with the sound off and still know what was going on. I love period movies and the set, clothing, scenery ect. fit the bill. Its to bad there was'nt some substance along with it.

If Vermeer Was Brit
This beautifully made film is worth seeing for the heavily meditated transmission of 17th century Dutch art to the screen, a stunning achievement. Delft is wonderfully recreated based on the works of Vermeer and many other painters. The basic story line about a Calvinist girl warily going into a Bohemian artist household is fine, and Scarlett Johanson is very good, as is her butcher's apprentice boyfriend.

The only problem is that this isn't Vermeer -- they should have simply used another name as in ordinary Roman a' clef novels such as The Sun Also Rises. While we do not have a dense background on Vermeer, we do know enough to say he wasn't a broody British Heathcliff. Painting wasn't his only gig nor even perhaps his main one -- he traded rugs & paintings & took over his dad's tavern. He knew all the artists in town and painted himself as a happy camper at least 3 times we know of. There is no reason to imagine his marriage and household wasn't happy, either -- it's an island of calm in 25 pics painted over 25 years. I guess you can't slander the dead, but as they used to say in the old days, there oughta be a law.

Colin Firth is otherwise fine as Heathcliff in this spin off of Wuthering Heights moved to Delft, and the rest of the cast as Heathcliff's batty family. Remove the historicist pretension and the film works beautifully. Unfortunately, the cartooning of major artists is getting epedemic with films like Shakespeare in Love and Amadeus. For kids raised on the History Channel, Hollywood as history, this is bad candy which shouldn't be accepted from stangers. They are getting the past recreated with great visual acumen, but 0 inner light.