Friday, April 15, 2005

Girl with a Pearl Earring

"Anna Kournikova would have been good in this " commented V out of the blue about halfway into the film and we both laughed. Certainly, there's little she could have done to make it any worse.

A determination to cinematically re-create both the stillness and the peculiar illumination of Jan Vermeer's art has resulted in a decidedly limp piece of film-making. The surely unintended irony is that you will experience greater drama sitting and watching one of Vermeer's paintings for a couple of hours.

Eduardo Serra's cinematography, and Ben Van Os' production design are first rate and very much faithful to the artist at the centre of the story, but the efforts that Tracy Chevalier put into creating subtle yet complex characters and a story that compelled on many different levels have been significantly diluted here. Tom Wilkinson's Van Ruijven is perhaps the one character that is equally alive on screen as he was on the page.

Alexander Desplat's dreadful original score announces its intention to further ruin things from the outset.

Perhaps this is one of those tales that has to be told in the first person? I will come back to this phenomenon, or rather the opposite of it, when I blog on Rex Pickett's Sideways sometime next week.

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