The Human Stain (film)
From AwardAnnals
| Film: | The Human Stain |
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| Director: | Robert Benton |
| Genres: | |
| Distributor: | Miramax |
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Reviews
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
Barnes and Noble
Theatergoers enjoyed little opportunity to embrace this powerful drama, a serious adaptation of Philip Roth’s provocative novel. But the strong performances of Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman alone merit critical reappraisal of The Human Stain. Hopkins portrays Coleman Silk, a college professor forced from his tenured position, following the furor caused by an innocent remark interpreted by oversensitive black students as a racial slur. The irony is that Silk is himself an African American whose light complexion has enabled to him to pass as white. The dislocated academic soon begins an affair with Faunia Farley (Kidman), a school janitor half his age, and eventually comes to grips with the fact that he has nothing in common with her. Director Robert Benton, no stranger to dramatically complex character studies, demonstrates a solid understanding of the human values involved in this story. Coleman and Faunia have perhaps been drawn to each other by their mutual disillusionments: He realizes that denying his heritage has taken a toll on him, and she finds him a welcome relief—despite their class and cultural differences—from her abusive husband (Ed Harris). Their romance isn’t just a sexual fling; it’s a determination by two complex, troubled people to take another risk in hopes of bettering their lives. Nicholas Meyer’s script is subtle but strong, and the seemingly miscast stars sweep away all doubts about their suitability for their respective roles by performing with unusual sensitivity. Ed Hulse
Related works
The Human Stain: Original Score
Score album to the new Miramax Pictures release The Human Stain features score by Rachel Portman who is the first female composer to win an Oscar for Best Score. She won for Emma in 1997.Rachel has also been nominated for Academy awards for her scores of Cider House Rules and Chocolat as well as two Grammy nominations.
It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret. But it’s not the secret of his affair, at seventy-one, with Faunia Farley, a woman half his age with a savagely wrecked past - a part-time farmhand and a janitor at the college where, until recently, he was the powerful dean of faculty. And it’s not the secret of Coleman’s alleged racism, which provoked the college witch-hunt that cost him his job and, to his mind, killed his wife. Nor is it the secret of misogyny, despite the best efforts of his ambitious young colleague, Professor Delphine Roux, to expose him as a fiend. Coleman’s secret has been kept for fifty years: from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman, who sets out to understand how…
