I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The acting in this movie is really good.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Girl With a Pearl Earring is all textures, colors, light, sound, and Charlott's face. Despite the awesome sensory smorgasbord and a palate that would make Vermeer proud nothing stands out to anywhere near the degree of Charlott's face.The greatest acting performance of all time measured by what she had to upstage.See my page at https://plus.google.com/107486172052080671382 for my review of this and much, much more. All it requires is suspension of disbelief and I have made that as easy as it could possibly be. Well it seems that I must add on to this so I will note the difficulty that I am having with my keyboard getting it to capitalize anything on the left side.

First, this is a chick flick. There is very little action; it's all about a girl's feelings; it takes an incredibly long time for the plot to develop; and finally, only a chick flick would devote major time to a girl getting her ears pierced (a metaphor for sex, but still boring). After one hour into the movie, we finally find out that a fat, rich guy has commissioned Vermeer to paint Griet (Scarlet's character), while also expecting to have sex with her. That would make her one heck of an expensive whore, but (get ready for it) the "twist" is that she's just a conservative servant girl. Yes, believe it or not, that's what the whole movie is about! Also, it's about the pearl earrings changing hands. Exciting stuff, huh?The main problem lies with Scarlet's acting. Sometimes her eyes are shifting all over the place (mostly up and down), and at other times she stares. I feel like she should have been portrayed as a strict Calvinist. However, we aren't given enough background information to know for sure how puritanical her morals are, plus she sometimes stares right into Vermeer's eyes, which is not what a highly religious girl would do. So sometimes she seems to be "asking for it" (I don't mean asking to be raped so please don't go there), and other times she pulls away from him as if in terror. So the character is very inconsistent and not well developed, despite all the screen time devoted to her.I know that girls, especially teenage girls, can be rather weird, inconsistent, and hard to read. Even so this character portrayal seems phony and hard to watch due to all the eye movements and staring; dumbly hanging her mouth open; at other times opening and closing her mouth like a fish; staring at a mistress or master somewhat brazenly before bowing her head in a supposed gesture of respect; going around in silence most of the time but at other times speaking boldly; etc. It's all too freaky and weird for me.Scarlet's mouth and face are beautiful, but to those who say one reason they watch the movie is just to see her mouth and face, I say go buy a poster of her instead of wasting almost two hours on this. In fact, a quick google tells me there are some nude photos of her floating around, but I probably shouldn't go there.Other potential faults of this movie: Vermeer, though he is already a famous painter and the breadwinner of the household, is depicted as henpecked and allowing the mother-in-law to dominate the household.Even though Vermeer's wife hears lots of rumors that Vermeer is painting Griet (the rumors are all over town and throughout the house), she doesn't go check on him while he is painting and catch him in the atrocious act of having Griet model fully clothed for his painting. Quelle horreur!The worst thing is that this fictional movie is unfair to the real Johannes Vermeer, and to his family and descendants.

Scarlett Johansson is brilliant and so are all the other actors. The movie was done so well, I do hope it got awarded for almost everything... I loved it. The first time I saw Scarlett was in Ghost World. She had a small part but she really came on as a very smart person, which I totally think she is. Despite what others say, she has a beautiful face and her lips and innocence are to die for... she is a brilliant actress, I must say it again. She doesn't need makeup, yet when she does wear it she is va va voom beautiufl. Others are just jealous of her. She seems to have it all. Do watch this movie on demand, it was one of the top movies most viewed on comcast.

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.