The Human Stain
by Robert Benton
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise, Nicole Kidman, Wentworth MillerDirector: Robert Benton
Brand: Disney
Producer: Andre Lamal
Producer: Bob Weinstein
Producer: Eberhard Kayser
Producer: Gary Lucchesi
Producer: Harvey Weinstein
Writer: Nicholas Meyer
Writer: Philip Roth
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Unknown
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-07-20
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Miramax
Movie Reviews of The Human Stain
Movie Review: AN IMPORTANT FILM, WORTH REPEATED VIEWINGS
Summary: 5 Stars
Everyone who has seen the film LAWRENCE OF ARABIA remembers how it opens with the death of T. E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole): he drives his motorcycle off a gravel road to avoid hitting some pedestrians. Similarly, THE HUMAN STAIN begins with the deaths of Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins) and his lover, Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman): Silk drives his car off an icy road to avoid hitting an approaching pickup truck that deliberately swerved into their lane. About 98% of the subsequent parts of both films are giant flashbacks showing us the significant life-choices Lawrence and Silk made and the things they said and did BEFORE that fatal moment.
One of these films is an affirmation, with a kind of summing up; the other is a catalyst or trigger for further thought. In the case of Lawrence, the many remaining scenes arouse our respect and admiration for a heroic historical individual. In that of Silk, we are meant to feel sorrow and compassion for a man with a hidden past--and similar feelings for his lover and for her ex-husband and for almost everyone else in this film--and THEN we are meant to generalize and begin to think about the many flaws in human nature and human society that cause so much suffering for ourselves and for the people we live among: anti-Semitism, racism, classism, ageism, snobbishness, racism, jealousy, hypocricy, cowardice, greed, distrust, racism, selfishness, sexism, puritanism, etc. etc. etc. And did I mention racism yet?
Other reviewers have complained that THE HUMAN STAIN leaves out too many parts of Philip Roth's wonderful novel, that Hopkins has a Welsh accent (would Jeff Bridges have done better?), that the actor playing Silk as a younger man (Wentworth Miller) doesn't look or sound like Hopkins, that the love relationship between Silk and Faunia (who is half his age) is "creepy," etc. etc. etc. For those reviewers, this film did not work; something got in the way. I am pretty certain, too, that for my late parents and for my late sister (as well as a few dozen ex-in-laws), this film would not have worked either--chiefly because of their blatant, lamentable RACISM (which many reviewers avoid discussing). One of the huge ironies of THE HUMAN STAIN is that if Silk's secret had been known to any of his fellow faculty members or townspeople, he would have been hated--and probably murdered--because of that, rather than for his (imaginary) Jewishness or for the May-December aspect of his love affair--with an uneducated "white trash cleaning lady." (By the way, Coleman Silk's fatal relationship with Faunia Farley is bracketed for us in the movie as being somewhere between Pres. Clinton's obsession with Ms. Lewinsky and that of Achilles with Briseis, the slave girl that Agamemnon coveted in THE ILIAD.)
While I was fully conscious of the differences between Miller's and Hopkins' portrayals of Silk, this did not bother me. I thought both actors did fine jobs with their scenes, as did Nicole Kidman (she is especially wonderful when talking with the captive crow!) and Gary Sinise (playing Nathan Zuckerman, who, at the end, is writing about Silk--and who perhaps has been, in a kind of loop, presenting us Silk's story all along, including how Silk met him). Phyllis Newman (an actress I admired forty years ago) does an excellent brief scene as Silk's wife, Iris, who suffers a fatal heart attack when he is falsely accused of being a racist, and Ed Harris is totally believable and totally wonderful as Lester Farley, Kidman's jealous, half-crazy, Vietnam-vet ex-husband (this is the best performance I have ever seen Harris give). Kudos also to Mimi Kuzyk as ambitious Prof. Delphine Roux, who viciously accuses Silk of being a racist.
Do the five stars I gave this film mean I think it is nearly perfect? No--if I were giving it a letter grade, I would rate it about A- (somewhere around a 92 perhaps). Why this high? Because despite its flaws, it DID work for me: it made me feel strongly and care strongly about the characters and their problems and the outcomes of their lives--and it made me continue to ponder them and the broader issues the film raised, not just for a few seconds or minutes or hours, but for several days after watching it. Not many films have had that strong an impact on me. THE MISSION did, and so did A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (both with screenplays by Robert Bolt, who coincidentally also wrote the screenplay for LAWRENCE OF ARABIA). But not many other films have had this effect--so THE HUMAN STAIN is in very good company.
Summary of The Human Stain
Academy Award(R) winners Anthony Hopkins (1991 Best Actor, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) and Nicole Kidman (2002 Best Actress, THE HOURS) along with Gary Sinise (FORREST GUMP) and Ed Harris (THE HOURS) star in the provocative mystery THE HUMAN STAIN. Coleman Silk (Hopkins) has a secret. A terrible 50-year-old secret that the esteemed college professor has kept hidden from everyone - including his wife, his children, and his down-and-out young lover (Kidman) - and it's about to ruin his entire life.Given the formidable challenge of adapting Philip Roth's acclaimed novel to the screen, it's a wonder that The Human Stain retains so much of what makes Roth's novel a masterpiece. As adapted by Nicholas Meyer, Robert Benton's film is inevitably a different animal altogether, and it's wide open to charges of miscasting and thematic diffusion. But at its core, this delicate drama succeeds in exposing the sins that stain all of humanity, forcing men like former welterweight boxer and esteemed professor Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins) to forsake family and career to conceal his African American heritage. Light-skinned and passing as a Jewish professor of classics in a tony East Coast college, 71-year-old Silk sinks into scandal when an innocent remark is misinterpreted as a racist slur, and this--along with his affair with an illiterate 34-year-old janitor (Nicole Kidman), and friendship with a reclusive novelist (Gary Sinise)--forms the crux of Benton's multilayered inquiry into the oppressive aftershocks of guilt, shame, and mourning, and the effects of judgment (internal and external) on our ability to connect. Roth's novel was one thing, Benton's film is another. Despite differing degrees of success, both are worthy of praise. --Jeff Shannon
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