The Human Stain
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Movie Reviews of The Human Stain
Movie Review: Mixed bag or results, but interesting and good!!
Summary: 4 Stars
My feelings are mixed about this movie. From what I have read in the professional reviews of this movie, the opinions are just as mixed. In sum, it is a movie that will hopefully give one something to think about at its surprising conclusion.Simply put, THE HUMAN STAIN is pretty much a revampted telling of an old tale that has facinated white audience since forever and opened wounds and insulted some black audiences. But, it stands apart from all its other predecesors out of the Hollywood movie machine in a good way that makes it worth seeing in that it's lead character played by Anthony Hopkins isn't stereotypically sympathetic and has depth. Still, his manipulative, cannibalistic and criminal Hannibal Lector has more integrity than his Coleman Silk.
The great and admirable Anthony Hopkins plays an aging professor with a dark secret who is accused of a racial slur by a student. Through a series of flashbacks, his secret is gradually revealed to the audience--his being a black man passing as white-- as he tells his story to a reporter and begins an affair with a young illiterate janitor on campus, Nicole Kidman. This young woman has a few secrets of her own like a possessive and obsessive husband.
Plotwise, I think the only minor flaw in the story will be that involving Kidman's charater's problems. Only a little, they interrupt the real focus of interest of Hopkins's Silk.
Though another trite tale of the mulatto, at lease the characters are 3 diminional thanks to writing,Hopkin's, Kidman's and the supporting actors performances(e.g. Gary Sinise, Ed Harris and Wentworh Miller--the young black man who plays Hopkins in his youth, and Anna Deavere Smith whose scenes and words to her son the young Silk are not fogettable, even Oscar worthy). Coleman Silk turns his back on his family and people to enjoy all the privileges and power of having white skin. Instead of challeging prejudices, he enforces and caters to the very prejudices that deny him to be treated fairly as a black man.
At the movies conclusion one is forced to asked if anything has really changed for the better in real life. From what I have noticed in popular culture, the media and all the answer is.....
Though the majority of black Americans like the characters played by Wentworth Miller and Anna Deavere Smith are a racially and culturally mixed people regardless of the complexion of skin ,or, whether both parents are black American or one parent is white or whatever, there are still those who will run as far away from being labeled black as they can get and declare themselves as separate but equal instead of challeging old inherited ideas of bigotry. Political correctness has warped into a new mask to hide self-hatred and racism. There are versions of Coleman Silks that still exist today, both dark and fair skinned, in the black community--even other non-black communities. Society still hasn't shed all its prejudices for those it looks upon as having the wrong skin color ,or, set of parents.
Movie Review: A Strained Stain
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Human Stain" is an intense drama directed by Robert Benton who won both the Best Director and the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscars for "Kramer vs. Kramer" in 1979. He's also has 2 nominations for Best Original Screenplay Oscars for "Bonnie & Clyde" (1967) & "The Late Show" (1977) and a Best Director nomination for "Places in the Heart" (1984). His direction here might have gained more attention if the film had worked a bit better. Nicholas Meyer wrote the screenplay as he did for 1987's "Fatal Attraction" and his Oscar nominated Best Adapted Screenplay for "The Seven Percent Solution" (1976). This is the third Philip Roth novel I'm aware of to be adapted to film following "Goodbye Columbus" (1969) & "Portnoy's Complaint" (1972).
Anthony Hopkins who has an Oscar for "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991) + 3 other nominations for "The Remains of the Day," "Nixon" and "Amistad" plays the aging professor Coleman Silk with a bravado and intensity. Phyillis Newman has a rare film cameo as his wife Iris Silk and has a wonderful heart attack scene where her arm flops uselessly. I kept wondering why Hopkins wasn't calling 911, but that might have cut the drama. Hopkins dances marvelously with Gary Sinise on the porch. Sinise who has a Best Supporting Oscar nomination for "Forest Gump" and is currently riding high on TV in "CSI New York" plays Ginger Rogers to Hopkins' Fred Astaire and does some lovely pirouettes on the porch. It's an odd scene, but it's interesting.
Nicole Kidman who won the Oscar in "The Hours" and played in that film with Ed Harris who was also nominated for an Oscar plays Faunia Farley. She does a great character performance of a sleazy trailer park trash janitor whose hard luck story of dead children broke her heart and her spirit. Now she is pursued by crazy ex-con Lester Foley who ultimately drives her to the drink. (Pun intended.) Harris is explosive and displays more spirit in his brief role here than in most of the "Empire Falls" mini-series.
The interesting part of the story has to do with the young Coleman Silk played by Wentworth Miller who is currently in the TV series "Prison Break" and also played in "Underworld." Miller has a brooding self-centered intensity that serves the film well. However, neither he nor Hopkins looks particularly black; so it becomes rather hard to believe. Anna Deavere Smith from "Philadelphia" (1993) and a horror flick with Jon Bon Jovi this year called "Cry Wolf" has several excellent scenes as his mother who realizes that her race makes her not good enough for her ambitious son. Jeff Perry from TV's "Nash Bridges" (who I knew long ago from Illinois State) does a nice cameo as a tennis player.
The cinematography and the performances glue us to the screen. But in the end, the film doesn't quite hang together. It's a good try. It offers a good evening's entertainment, given somewhat lower than Oscar expectations. Enjoy!
Movie Review: Revives memories if youve read the book; otherwise, beware
Summary: 4 Stars
4 stars if you've read the book, otherwise 2 stars.Background for this review: I am a big Philip Roth fan (I got hooked upon reading "The Counterlife", which is an absolute masterpiece), and believe him to be one of America's greatest living writers. I'd rate every Roth book since "The Counterlife" as a 4 or 5 - "The Human Stain" would rate a 5, although it's not Roth's all-time best or his recent best (of the recent Zuckerman books, I thought "American Pastoral" was the best). So, knowing the complexity of the Roth's books, I was amazed to hear that "The Human Stain" was being made into a movie, and naturally I rushed out to see the end product.
For someone who has read and enjoyed "The Human Stain", I think the movie is reasonably good, primarily because it brings back impressions from reading the book. However, if you haven't read the book, I think that the movie is going to come across as overly complicated, jumbled mess, which obscures the many messages Roth is able to communicate in the book.
"The Human Stain" is a very complex story with many disparate elements: current political scandals, coming of age, World War II, boxing, familial relationships, academic politics, race relations, political correctness and modern-day witch hunts, life in the underclass, abusive relationships, homosexuality, and multiple deaths and love affairs. Any two or three of these elements could easily fill up a two hour movie. Surprisingly, the moviemakers chose to bring almost all of these elements into the movie, in an attempt to be faithful. However, without hundreds of pages and hours of the reader's attention, and without Roth's genius to tie it all together and add meaning, I don't think it works as a stand-alone movie.
There is one excellent acting performance in the film: Ed Harris is almost as riveting playing psychotic Vietnam vet Lester as Anthony Hopkins was playing Hannibal Lecter. Casting this film is indeed a nearly impossible task. I was able to suspend some disbelief to appreciate Anthony Hopkins as Coleman Silk, but it is true that the actor who plays the young Coleman Silk (who is actually closer to Silk's racial profile) doesn't look anything like Anthony Hopkins. The worst casting was Gary Sinise as Roth's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman. Sinise is way too young to play an impotent Jewish writer in his twilight years.
What recent Philip Roth book would make the best movie? I think "Operation Shylock": it has the most straightforward plot whose central element (Roth's double identity) could easily transfer to the screen, and there is even a decent amount of action and suspense. I don't know why the producers chose to film "The Human Stain" - it presents a much greater challenge for them and audience members who haven't read the book.
Movie Review: Interesting plot-driven character study
Summary: 4 Stars
Classics Professor Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins), exasperated that two students have yet to show up for his class points to their empty seats and ask rhetorically, "Do they exist or are they spooks?" He should have chosen his words more carefully because the two absent students are black and Silk is subsequently charged with using racial slurs by the college.
Yes, this could definitely happen, although one would expect it to be cleared up once there was an investigation. However, Coleman Silk gets more than a little uptight. Something has hit a nerve. He has enemies. He doesn't cooperate and in fact resigns in face of the charge. His wife drops dead, and at the age of 71 Coleman gets involved in a Viagra-hyped love affair with Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman), a 34-year-old cleaning woman and high school dropout with a past.
Turns out that Coleman too has a past, and that past partially explains why he got so uptight about the racial slur charge. Seems that Coleman has "passed." Seems that he was "colored" and didn't want to be colored and so forsook his family and passed into the white world and never looked back.
This is from the novel by Philip Roth, who has written many splendid novels. The adaptation is by Nicholas Meyer who did most of the scripts for the Star Trek movies. Robert Benton's direction is professional and clear. Anthony Hopkins is very good as one would expect and Nicole Kidman as a hardtack brunette with worry lines on her face is vividly real as the bitter, but vulnerable Faunia Farley. Ed Harris plays her also bitter, spaced-out, estranged husband, a twisted Viet Vet with malevolence on his mind.
The story is told in a straight-forward way with flashbacks to Coleman's past where we see that he was a welterweight prize fighter for a while and had his heart broken because his very blonde bride-to-be just couldn't stomach the thought of marrying into a Negro family. Wentworth Miller plays young Coleman and definitely looks and acts the part. Anna Deavere Smith plays his mother with the kind of dignity you would expect from a woman who raised the son of Pullman porter to become a classics professor at a small New England private college. Gary Sinise as Coleman's neighbor, Nathan Zuckerman (and Philip Roth perennial), narrates the story from the novel he eventually writes.
All in all an interesting movie that recalls an age gone by while at the same time reminding us that the politically correct postmodern world is upon us.
See this for Nicole Kidman who is on her way to becoming one of the great stars of the cinema as yet again she shows that she cannot be typecast, and for Anthony Hopkins, one of the more accomplished actors of our time.
Movie Review: Too good to have been an American hit in the theatres.
Summary: 4 Stars
The Human Stain (Robert Benton, 2003)
Robert Benton does not often direct movies, but when he does, you can be pretty much guaranteed a knockout: Kramer vs. Kramer, Places in the Heart, Nobody's Fool. After five years of silence (the longest in his career since the gap between his first and second films), Benton emerged in 2003 with The Human Stain, based on Philip Roth's rather obscure (for Roth, anyway) novel, and comes up with an interesting, complex, well-acted little film that far too few people saw.
Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins) is a professor at a small New England university. As the movie opens, he is accused of racism and his tenure is revoked, leading to the death of his wife, Iris (Phyllis Newman, of the fine, cancelled-far-too-early show 100 Centre St.), from a heart attack. His resulting rage at this pair of injustices leads him to the friendship of a local writer, Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), and romance with a young woman who works as a janitor at the school, Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman). Faunia's ex-husband Lester (Ed Harris) is not too thrilled about the latter. Underlying it all is a secret Silk has been keeping for half a century that might destroy him... or save him.
Screenplay writer Nicholas Meyer sure has come a long way since Invasion of the Bee Girls. Here he takes a Philip Roth novel and does it justice, though to be fair it's kind of hard to buy Anthony Hopkins, of all people, in this role. If you can swallow your disbelief once the secret is revealed (and while that does happen relatively early on, it's still a spoiler), you're golden. Kidman plays her role to the hilt, taking on, in essence, the role Susan Sarandon popularized in the similarly-neglected 1990 film White Palace. Roth swung the age difference, but the rest of the trappings of the romantic tale are in place, and work just as well here as they did there. Zuckerman, Roth's detached and somewhat bemused Everyman character, sits on the sidelines and observes everything. I can't imagine what temptation there must be for anyone adapting a Zuckerman novel to bring Nathan himself to the forefront, but it's got to be monstrous (Nathan Zuckerman, after all, is the enduring character of Roth's novels, while everyone around him just passes through). Meyer resists, though, and Gary Sinise acts the part wonderfully. In the one scene where Zuckerman's presence indirectly affects the plot, Sinise just sits there looking half-embarrassed to be an agent of change. It's great stuff. Hopkins, on the other hand, is huge and bombastic and chews as much scenery as did Edward G. Robinson in his prime, and it fits. A fine film. If you missed it in its theatrical release, and you probably did, check it out on DVD. *** ½