The Human Stain

Amazon.com

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

Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

of course, it doesn't stand up to the novel.......2007-08-12

I came into this movie knowing that, as has been proven time and time again in the history of novels being made into movies, that the adaptation would of course be an oversimplification of the complexity of the book. The only question would be how gross the oversimplification would be.

Philip Roth's novel is a forthright examination of the thoroughness of misery. Roth, as perhaps the last among those we can call American Novelists, peers into the American character to see how we all suffer through depths of misery though we look anxiously for an easy lifestyle--we are, after all, Americans. But The Human Stain takes an honest look at everyone, from Coleman Silk, a classics professor pushed out of his university position due to a charge of racism, which he explodes over because he is a man carrying far bigger secrets that are tearing him apart, to Lester Farley, an abusive, dangerous and violent ex-husband who is also an incredibly damaged Vietnam vet.

Of course, for this movie, many of the character depths would have to be sliced away for the sake of time. One of the slices here, unfortunately, is of Lester, which I think is a shame, because that is an immediate indication that the movie is not going to address the breadth of human character than the novel does. Instead of being a sick SOB that we can actually feel bad for because of his own damage, Lester in this movie (played by Ed Harris, of course--who else?) is quite simply the raving ex-husband.

This lack of depth is more unfortunate, considering some of the actrors that are pulled together for this--I mentioned Ed Harris, but also Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman (who has been climbing higher and higher in my ladder of opinion), Gary Sinise--these are actors who could have dealt with the boxes within boxes of Roth's characterizations, but alas the script does not give them the opportunity. Some good moments, especially between Sinise and Hopkins, but overall a little flat. A shame.

Having Read the Book I wanted to Satisfy My Curiosity About the Transfer to Film.......2007-06-16

Philip Roth's book The Human Stain was a fictional examination of racial/social and sexual biases in American culture with more than a dose of hypocrisy thrown in. I expected it to be a difficult novel to translate to film and I believe I was partially right.
The casting is excellent and Nicole Kidman is very good as Faunia Farley a bit of a lost soul being stalked by her violent and insane ex-husband who gets involved with an older college professor who has just lost his position due to an abnormally ridiculous case of Political Correctness. Anthony Hopkins is fabulous in that role although as the plot unfolds it becomes a bit harder to see him as the older version of his younger self as portrayed in flashback sequences. (Trying hard not to give too much away here).
A real strong performance by Ed Harris ( The most underrated guy in Hollywood) as the crazed husband cements this as a film worth checking out.
It's understandable why this wasn't a huge hit at the box office because it is a literary and somewhat challenging film.

Interesting plot-driven character study.......2007-03-09

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.

Too good to have been an American hit in the theatres........2007-01-26

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

Great drama, but not a suspense........2007-01-22

Let me preface my review by saying (a) I have never read the novel and (b) I probably read too much about the movie before I saw it. I also watch movies for entertainment, never searching, and rarely stumbling upon, a much deeper meaning.

That having been said, I was sure that I would find this movie completely unwatchable. I watched it only because Wentworth Miller was in it. But I found that I was actually quickly captivated by the movie, even before Miller appeared. I don't find the premise of Coleman Silk's dismissal from the college completely unbelievable. I find it, unfortunately, all too believable that an esteemed academic COULD be quickly dimissed for innocent remarks made that had potential of being racist, even if they were not. What I did not find was the suspense that the description of the movie alluded to. I don't really see how the revelation of Coleman Silk's big "secret" was about to ruin his life. In fact, in consideration of the fact that the loss of his job was due to a racist remark, the revelation of his secret could have saved his life. His "secret" had much stronger impacts on his life in the flashback scenes of the movie.

Ironically, I also found the casting of Wentworth Miller as the young Silk every bit as implausible as the casting of Anthony Hopkins as the elder Silk, even knowing full-well that Miller is perfectly cast in the part. If only the Silk family had just one member that had skin nearly as fair as Miller's, I could have bought it. (Perhaps Miller's own family should have been cast.) But Miller looked like the adopted child in the family, clearly much fairer than his parents and both siblings, both an older brother, and a younger sister. I also found it implausible that Silk had developed an incredibly strong British accent, presumably from his time at Oxford, after growing up in New Jersey and attending NYU, and then retained that accent over many, many years teaching in New England.

However, it goes without saying that Hopkins played the part as well as it could be played, even if the casting on it's face was less-than ideal. Miller's casting was ideal on it's face AND his performance was strong, but I do wonder how much of it was "acting" per se, and not emotion based on his own feelings and struggles with his identity. In other words, he was great, but was it really that much of a stretch? Nicole Kidman was excellent, perfectly pulling off her character, as she always does. Somehow, she is always believeable, even if she is a beautiful, classy Australian playing a somewhat grubby, class-less American.

I watched this film on DVD, so I have to believe that nothing was left out of my version. But I feel like I may have seen an edited version based on other reviews. As mentioned, I found the movie to be far from suspenseful. While Coleman's secret may have had significance in his youth, I found it to be far less significant in his adulthood. I have no idea how people knew that Kidman's character was illiterate. I also have no idea what the scene with the crow had to do with anything other than allowing a means for Kidman's character to confess further details of her past. If that was it's purpose, it could have been much more cleverly achieved. Perhaps these were details that were in the book but not well integrated into the film.

Overall, the movie is very watchable. It is a good story that makes one pause to think about the struggles of people of color, especially for those who have never had to go through such struggles. But don't expect to be sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for some huge secret to be revealed or for it to come out and ruin Silk's life. It's a great drama, not a strong suspense.

La Piel Del Deseo (The Human Stain) [NTSC/REGION 4 DVD. Import-Latin America]

Average customer rating:

La Piel Del Deseo (The Human Stain) [NTSC/REGION 4 DVD. Import-Latin America]
Director: Robert Benton
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Average customer rating:

of course, it doesn't stand up to the novel
Having Read the Book I wanted to Satisfy My Curiosity About the Transfer to Film
Interesting plot-driven character study
Too good to have been an American hit in the theatres.
Great drama, but not a suspense.

The Human Stain [Region 2]
Starring: Anthony Hopkins , Nicole Kidman , Ed Harris , Gary Sinise , and Wentworth Miller
Director: Robert Benton
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0001XLY9C