Girl With a Pearl Earring is a 2003 movie starring Scarlet Johansson and Colin Firth. It follows a factionalized version of how the famous painting of the same name was made. This movie has some incredible cinematography and color with its shots. However, the story isn’t told with a lot of energy.

Girl With a Pearl Earring follows Griet, a poor Dutch maid working fo the famed painter Johannes Vermeer. Over time, she becomes his muse, and he later paints her in his magnum opus, Girl with a Pearl Earring. While the story itself is fictionalized as the girl behind the painting is a total mystery, it does entirely feel possible and grounded.

One of the best aspects about this movie is the cinematography. Shots often make use of shadows and colors to make the overall world feel like a painting. It’s absolutely gorgeous to watch. Scenes inside of buildings often cast characters against a black background to elevate their facial features, as well as draw parallels between the movie and the painting it’s based off of. Outside, shots often have one color underlying the whole scene. This makes them feel like some of Vermeer’s other paintings, which often feature colors such as yellow as the focal point. The acting in this movie is pretty good overall. Colin Firth is a very likable nobleman, and he conveys to the audience what he’s thinking in relation to the other characters. Scarlet Johansson is very subtle, although she really doesn’t have a lot of lines throughout the whole movie, and most of the time she just seems to gape with her mouth open as other characters do things throughout the house.

My biggest problem with this movie is that the story is told without much energy or inertia. It tries to make the audience believe that Vermeer is fervent and frantic about painting Griet, but it’s really never shown. The only time his obsession is even slightly shown is when he tries to hide Griet from his jealous wife. It really sticks out because I feel the rest of this movie is rather fantastic.

Overall, I liked Girl With a Pearl Earring. It’s not without its flaws, but it deserves to be seen as it’s nonetheless a good movie.