The Human Stain: Movie Review, DVD Review (2003)

Directed by Robert Benton, written by Nicholas Meyer, based on the novel by Philip Roth, 106 minutes, rated R.

Robert Benton's “The Human Stain” is a perfect example of the importance of good casting. If it’s not just right, the movie in question won’t be right either, regardless of how compelling the script, how talented the cast, how gifted the director.

That’s just the case in “The Human Stain,” which sinks onscreen because of the casting of Anthony Hopkins in the lead. He’s so wrong for the movie, he renders much of it unbelievable, particularly the stunning plot twist on which so much of it hinges.

As written by Nicholas Meyer from Philip Roth’s 2000 novel, the film is tricky to review because so much of it is staked on this central twist, which is revealed in the film’s first third, thus leaving two-thirds of it essentially unmentionable by me.

Without revealing anything crucial, what can be said is this: The movie stars Hopkins as Coleman Silk, a professor of classics at a prestigious New England college who has recently quit his job after being charged with an ethnic slur.

Apparently, Coleman isn’t who he appears to be. His entire adult life has been a tumble of lies that have succeeded in deceiving everyone around him--including his recently dead wife, who never really knew who him.

Now the poison of those lies threatens to taint his love affair with Faunia (Nicole Kidman), a rough, smoky young woman with bad manners and anger management issues who has her own problems dealing with Lester (Ed Harris), her murderous ex-husband stalking her in his monster truck.

It’s Coleman’s relationship with Faunia and his friendship with the writer Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), who narrates, that force him to confront the unfortunate decisions he made in his past. Eased back into Coleman’s youth, we’re introduced to the professor as a young man (Wentworth Miller), struck by his ugly deceit, and then are plunged into stupified silence as we try to digest it.

It’s so shocking when Coleman’s truth hits, you can’t believe it--not because it’s unbelievable, which it isn’t, but because the casting of Hopkins makes it unbelievable. I realize I’m being vague, but if I weren’t, the most discouraging e-mails would start pouring in.

Here’s something specific—after winning last year’s Academy Award for Best Actress, Nicole Kidman apparently lost her wits in 2003. First she threw herself into “Cold Mountain,” which turned out to be a lukewarm molehill, and now she makes the most awful “Human Stain.”

As Faunia, a self-described piece of “trailer trash” with a cigarette forever at the ready, she is never once believable, which brings us back to the casting and the real reason this whole mess falls flat.

Fans of Roth’s novel shouldn’t expect to find it here—the biting wit for which Roth is known has almost entirely been stripped away, leaving in its wake a maudlin movie that could have said so much more about its crucial ethnic slur had the people doing the talking only made us believe what they had to say.

Grade: D

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