The Human Stain: Drama. Starring Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Gary
Sinise and Ed Harris. Directed by Robert Benton. (R. 106 minutes. At Bay Area
theaters.)
"The Generous Stain" is a mediocre movie made by and for astute people.
That doesn't intermediate that, in the peter out, it's any larger than a usage Vin Diesel
picture, but there's an comprehensive sense of worthiness about it that's not
unearned. Good actors (Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman) and a good director
(Robert Benton) do their most successfully to put from a good book by a serious American
novelist (Philip Roth).
Unfortunately, just as exalted individuals can be done in by the most
pedestrian of ailments, "The Human Stain" falls victim to a fatal lack of
narrative drive, suspense and drama. Kidman and Hopkins are wrong for their
roles, and that, combined with a pervading inevitability, cuts the film off
from any sustained vitality. The result is something admirable but lifeless.
Still, there's pleasure to be had in watching the actors make the effort,
even if there's no mistaking that we're watching an effort — and no mistaking
that we're being offered effort, not truth, with the implicit idea that we
should admire it. When the patrician-looking Kidman, playing a cleaning lady,
rages about her white-trash life of tragedy and degradation, there's no
believing her, not for a second. But there's no reason not to watch, either.
Check it out: Kidman with a tattoo, yelling.
In the same spirit, we watch Anthony Hopkins play an African American
passing as Jewish, even though he looks neither black nor Jewish and doesn't
even bother to sound American. "He taught in England," we're told.
That a black man from Newark, N.J., pretending to be a white man from
Newark would adopt an English accent adds a whole layer of artifice that Roth
never anticipated. One could argue that it takes the character of Coleman Silk
and renders him finally and completely crazy, but that's not how we experience
it. Instead we experience "The Human Stain" as a movie about Hopkins and
Kidman kissing.
It's 1998, the year that Bill Clinton was impeached for making a fool of
himself, and Silk, an ostensibly Jewish professor of classics, is in trouble.
He has made an innocent statement that was deliberately misconstrued as racist,
and in reaction he quits. His wife dies, and he soon befriends the writer
Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's alter ego, played by Gary Sinise. Zuckerman is the
witness to the story, the narrator.
"The Human Stain" is a difficult book to adapt, full of digressions and
leaps back and forth in time. But the main difficulty is that the plot
elements are essentially disparate, in that one doesn't proceed from the other
in dramatic terms. The connections between Coleman's past and his present, his
race and his career, his sex life and the president's are all thematic, not
dramatic. In a book this isn't a problem — it could be a virtue — but in a
movie we feel the lack of build as a lack of urgency.
Benton ("Kramer vs. Kramer") and screenwriter Nicholas Meyer could have
chosen to surrender completely to the book by making their film into a
rumination on character. But that could have been worse. Instead, Meyer
slashes through the book's first 100 pages in a matter of minutes to get to
its narrative heart — Silk's revitalizing but perilous relationship with the
young cleaning woman.
Even with that, there's not much on which to hang a compelling dramatic
story. The professor's young lover does have a violent, insane ex-husband, but
his scariness is undercut by the casting of Ed Harris, who's more roguish than
threatening. But compounding the problem more than anything else is the esteem
in which the book is held, which prevents the filmmakers from wholesale
additions to the story. They'd have had more freedom with a so-so book and
might have made a better movie.
As it stands, the best scenes are the flashbacks to the '40s, with
Wentworth Miller quite believable as the young Coleman, who gradually decides
to turn his back on everything he is in order to become what he's not. The
pain of that process is real and seems more important than an old man's last,
Viagra-propelled romp through Cupid's grove.
Advisory: This film contains strong language, erotic situations and frontal
nudity.
This article appeared on page
D - 5
of the San Francisco Chronicle
TECHNICAL ANALYST TEAM LEAD
ENGINEER Company You Technology
SR. SUPPLY CHAIN ANALYST Company
ITALIAN ECE SPECIALIST
STAFF MEMBER (CHEMIST) Company
PROFESSIONALS Company Autodesk
FUNERAL COUNSELORS Company Bay Area