The Human Stain (2003)
Coleman Silk is a worldly and admired professor who loses his job after unwittingly making a racial slur. To clear his name, Silk writes a book about the events with his friend and colleague Nathan Zuckerman, who in the process discovers a dark secret Silk has hidden his whole life. All the while, Silk engages in an affair with Faunia Farley, a younger woman whose tormented past threatens to unravel the layers of deception Silk has constructed.
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Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??
Boring, long, and too preachy.
A Brilliant Conflict
Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
An utter snoozer - the kind of rambling, aimless movie you'd expect to be on the stars' earliest movies resumes, not work they'd perform after being famous. Then again, who can blame them for collecting their $ millions for so little dialogue, effort and acting needed.
While reading the book I remember thinking it would take a lot of work to make this book into a movie because each character is a movie on their own, and I guess I was right. The movie focused mainly on Silk's past and his story, and Silk is the main character but is equally as interesting as Les Farley or Delphine Roux, which the movie failed to portray.I think the movie was exceptionally smooth which I thought would be hard to do considering how the book would go from past to present numerously, but I wish they could've given each character from Roth's novel their well-deserved screen time.The movie was beautifully shot and the acting was great, but it needed to be longer to take in the full plot.
A chance circumstance of birth. One child might be handsome, one may be deformed. One never knows what advantages or disadvantages they will be bestowed in life. A fascinating tale of self hatred, undeserved and unnecessary. But not surprising for the time period. When we can't show who we really are, isn't that what we are doing? An unusual story, but most likely a common one. Played understated by both Nicole Kidman and Anthony Hopkins. Ed Harris is menacing as soon as he appears on screen. Gary Sinise is as we, the audience,knowing nothing. Then gradually, it is slowly revealed like an onion. Layer after layer. Nicole Kidman obviously did her research on battered women. It all rings true.Each character struggling with what they do and do not know. What do they choose to do with that? Wentworth Miller was a brilliant choice as the young Coleman.The irony in that casting is revealed in the trivia notes, so don't read them until the film is over. I was enthralled by this film and count it among my favorites of all time.
Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris star in "The Human Stain," a 2003 film directed by Robert Benton and based on the novel by Philip Roth.Hopkins plays a brilliant professor, Coleman Silk, who is accused of racism when he questions whether two students whom he has never seen in his class are "spooks." Evidently word gets back to them and a complaint is filed. Furious, Silk resigns. A few days later, his wife (Phyllis Newman) dies. With no place to channel his anger, and believing the incident led to the death of his wife, he seeks out a writer (Gary Sinise) and says that he wants to write a book. The two become friends; Coleman writes some of his book and decides he sounds like a lunatic.Besides, now Coleman has something much more interesting going on - an affair with a beautiful young woman, Faunia (Kidman). A divorcée with three low-level jobs, Faunia has an ex-husband (Harris) stalking her and has suffered a tragedy in her life, for which her ex blames her. Though he's warned off the relationship, Coleman says, "She's not my great love, but she's my last love" and refuses to give her up.Coleman has a secret of his own, one that has defined his life, and in flashback we see what happened to him. So the story changes somewhat, from this professor who had to resign over an unfair accusation and has an affair with a much younger woman with problems, to the story of Coleman himself and the choices he made.This is a film that keeps you interested for sure as it takes off in different directions, but does it beautifully, not in a jerky way. One minute the man is fighting a committee, leaving in anger, having his wife collapse...Then he's convinced these people murdered his wife with their accusations and wants Nathan (Sinise) to help him write about it.Suddenly, he's involved with Faunia and we are brought into the sorrow and difficulty in her life...and then we are brought back to his life from the time he was a teenager. And somehow, it all comes together.The acting is phenomenal, with Kidman's moody and sexy behavior, and Hopkins' obsession with her, intensity, and sudden outbursts of rage. Harris and Sinise are wonderful, with less to do.Highly recommended, and brings us back to an era where people were driven to make very severe choices in order to achieve they life they wanted.