Nicole Kidman’s Faunia Farley is attracted to Anthony Hopkins’ Coleman Silk in The Human Stain.
The secret hidden by Coleman Silk for his entire adult life is the thrust of The Human Stain, and it's tough to discuss the film without revealing it. The truth about the character is also the main reason why casting Anthony Hopkins in the role is a distracting miscalculation.
Hopkins certainly possesses the intellectual gravitas to portray Silk, a professor of classic literature at a small New England college. He is disgraced by a slip of the tongue in the "summer of sanctimony," during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Inquiring about two students who haven't attended class in the first five weeks of term, he wonders aloud if they actually exist or if they're "spooks."
Bad word choice. The two students he's never seen are African-Americans who take the word as a racial slur. Silk, the first Jew to hold the dean's position, and who has amassed a strong record of equal opportunity hiring, resigns. The news literally kills his wife. A couple of years later he barges in on blocked, reclusive novelist Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), spinning tales about his past - not revealing everything - and gushing about his affair with a woman half his age named Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman).
The Human Stain is based on a novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Philip Roth and it shows. Director Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer, Nobody's Fool) gilds each frame for posterity, weaving between Silk's current scandal and flashbacks to the 1940s when he was a boxer breaking away from his family. Therein lies the secret, a lifelong lie unraveling bit by bit, finally to a point of confusion if we understand completely, then shock that such a thing could happen, especially when young Silk grew up to be Anthony Hopkins.
The first hint that something is amiss is when young Silk (played by Wentworth Miller) doesn't imitate Hopkins' crisp English diction. The accent could be part of Silk's fabrication but a line of dialogue explaining that would be helpful. The same goes for his Jewish heritage. Silk's life is a complete, devastating falsehood that simply can't be credible in the hands of such a precise actor as Hopkins. What he is isn't what Silk would turn out to be.
Setting aside that problem, The Human Stain is an engrossing piece of work although it feels like something that needs more time to explore than a 106-minute movie provides. The performances are uniformly good, even if characters are conveniently arranged to either maintain Silk's secret or set up the opening tragedy that sets off the flashbacks. Nicholas Meyer's screenplay hits only the narrative high points, whereas Roth's novel likely dug into the dirt underneath.
Hopkins is fine, as one expects, in a role calling for erudite feistiness tinged with romance and regret. His pairing with Kidman is essential to the plot, not a male star's fantasy like so many May-December screen couplings. Kidman plays it tough as a woman beneath Coleman's status, aware of his social shortcomings but drawn to a man who, unlike her ex-husband, nutty Lester (Ed Harris), won't torment her. Sinise simply plays observer and probably doesn't deserve the screen time provided except that Zuckerman is Roth's best-known literary creation.
There isn't a false note in The Human Stain except Hopkins' casting when all is revealed. Even then, the movie's emotional pull and tragic irony are compelling. Some plot directions are raised and forgotten in the condensing process, while others like Lester's danger are almost forgotten until necessary. Benton does an admirable job in a rare film that one wishes were longer. See the movie, read the book.
The Human Stain
Grade: B+
Director: Robert Benton
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise, Wentworth Miller, Jacinda Barrett, Anna Devere Smith
Screenplay: Nicholas Meyer, based on the novel by Philip Roth
Rating: R; sexual situations, nudity, profanity, boxing violence
