The Human Stain [DVD] [2004]

Ooooo! THE HUMAN STAIN offered the potential for so many Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Hopkins & Kidman), Best Supporting Actor (Miller, Harris, & Smith).

Hopkins is Coleman Silk, an aging and respected professor of literature at an idyllic New England liberal arts college, who, in the "now" of 1998, runs afoul of extremist political correctness. He's accused of racism after referring to two students, who've been absent from his class for the first 5 weeks of the term, as "spooks", i.e. ghosts. Silk has never met them under any circumstances, but, as bad luck would have it, they're both Black. Called onto the carpet by the Board, and receiving no support from those who should know better, Coleman angrily resigns. When Silk breaks the news to his wife, she suffers a fatal heart attack. As Coleman puts it, his persecutors killed the wrong person.

On the rebound, Silk meets Faunia Farely (Kidman), who holds down three blue collar jobs, is separated from her abusive husband, a psychotic Vietnam vet named Lester (Ed Harris), and who keeps the ashes of her two dead kids under the bed. Faunia describes her troubled situation as befitting "trailer trash", and carries more baggage than a loaded 747. But Silk is besotted, and embarks on a torrid love affair with the 30-year younger woman. As Silk declares to his writer friend Nathan (Gary Sinise):

"This is not my first love, it's not my great love, but it's my last love". It's love - and great sex - in the winter of Coleman's life. Even Viagra gets a verbal plug.

THE HUMAN STAIN is also a tale of "racial passing", i.e. the process of shifting one's racial identity. You see, Coleman has a secret that he's kept buried for decades. (No, it's not that he's Welsh like Hopkins, but something else.) The film jumps back and forth between 1998 and the late 1940s, when a young Silk (Wentworth Miller) chooses to make the transition and abandon his natural family forever. It's only now, in a last orgasm of sharing with Faunia, that Coleman can unburden himself.

The plot sounds like grist for a maudlin TV soap, but is raised to heights of excellence by extraordinary performances, especially Hopkins and Kidman. Hopkins wore green contact lenses to match Miller's eye color, and the two men synchronized speech and body movement characteristics to make the age transition as seamless as possible. Nicole spent time in shelters for abused women to acclimatize herself to aspects of the role. And a scene where she longs to touch the back of Coleman's neck is Oscar material by itself.

Perhaps the most poignant sequence involves the young Coleman and his mother (Anna Deavere Smith), when the latter suggests what her birthday present might be five years hence. It brings tears to her son's eyes, and perhaps some of those in the audience. Smith's role is not extensive, but certainly memorable.

"Human stain" refers to the indelible mark, however miniscule in the universal scheme of things, that each of us makes on the world and which can't be undone. This film is about Coleman's stain and his coming to terms with it.

At one point, Coleman asks Faunia, battered by life and circumstances, what she wants from their relationship. She responds: "kindness". This is, for each of us perhaps, the greatest truth of all.

A director has the perogative to create a film as he sees fit. Just because the pace isn't speedy and rushed and it is 'flat' compared to the other 'action' films on the market, it doesn't make it a bad film.

The film was entirely appropriate to the novel. The pace was slow for a reason. Do you think the events that took place happened at an accelerated rate? NO! The characters lived and suffered and nothing about suffering is fast.

Alot happens in this film but you have to look deeply to find it. If everything in life needs to be served on a silver platter nothing would be interesting. If you pay attention (like you should whilst doing anything) you will notice more. Little jokes etc. shouldn't have to be obvious.

Characters develop, a story about the past unfolds and friendships form. Admittedly the role played by Ed Harris was under-developed and Gary Sinise's role was miss-cast but there have been worse mistakes in other movies that triumphed. (eg. Orlando Bloom's monotone performance in Lord of the Rings.) I completely agree with Jason Hood that Ed Harris' character deserved more screen time, (needed more screen time.)

I don't wish to pick a fight with the other reviewers, but I believe that if you give this movie a chance, you may come away with something. I think that as a movie it is entertaining but if you are not in the mood for a deep, intense film save it for another day. You have to be in the mood for it. If you ever have the time to watch it twice you may see that it's not so bad after all.

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.