Girl with a Pearl Earring (DVD, 2004)

The best thing about this movie is the cinematography and the insight it gives to an artist and his painting in 1660s Holland. We see Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth) mixing the paint, figuring out his subject, and even painting the pictures. The story revolves around Grietl (Scarlett Johansson), a young Calvinist whose family needs her to work as a maid in the Catholic Vermeer household; religion must be the reason that Grietl wears what looks like a nun's cap throughout the movie. The house is run by Vermeer's wife and her mother--both of whom are immediately jealous of the new maid. Why? Who knows?

Johannes immediately takes a liking to the maid, but nothing ever happens to create suspicion. He is all business and uses Grietl to help clean the studio and mix some of the colors. Eventually, he is forced to use Grietl as the subject of one of his paintings because his patron wants a portrait of her.
A gruesome part of the movie occurs when he cannot visualize Griel wearing pearl earrings (duh!), and so she has to pierce her ear so that he can see how it looks. The actual piercing is shown in the movie, and we all gasp when it looks like actual blood coming from Grietl's ear.

"The Girl With a Pearl Earring" is an actual portrait by Vermeer, and the director of the movie says that it has been compared to the Mona Lisa--it is called the Mona Lisa of the North. The movie is stunningly beautiful, moves slowly, and ends too soon.

Some of the unresolved conflicts are: (1) Grietl has a cute boyfriend who works for the family's butcher. He has proposed to Grietl, so did she marry him? (2) Grietl's father is very ill which causes her to have to leave her own family. What happened to them? (3) What happened to the picture after Grietl was dismissed. Did the patron buy it? Where is it now?

This movie could be better but it is pretty good as it is.