Human Stain (DVD)

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Think about this: 2003's "The Human Stain" was based on a novel by Philip Roth ("Goodbye, Columbus," "Portnoy's Complaint"). The screenplay was written by Nicholas Meyer ("The Seven-Per-Cent Solution," "Time After Time," "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan"). The cinematography was done by the late Jean Yves Escoffier ("The Crow: City of Angels," "Good Will Hunting," "Rounders"). The music was composed by Rachel Portman ("The Joy Luck Club," "The Cider House Rules," "Chocolat"). The director was Robert Benton ("Kramer vs. Kramer," "Places in the Heart," "Billy Bathgate"). And the stars are Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris.

How could this much talent involved with one motion picture produce so much soap?

"The Human Stain" is one of those films that depends almost entirely upon a single shocking revelation for its impact and its very reason for being. Yet the revelation comes less than halfway through the film. This is no "Sixth Sense," and, indeed, I will reveal the so-called secret here at the outset since it's already pretty well known from the movie's ads and from virtually every previous review that's ever been written about it. The movie deals with an African-American man who passes for white. There. I've said it. Is it worth the bother of an entire film? In this case, no.

Besides that, the idea is hardly new or innovative. Director Elia Kazan covered the same ground better in the movie "Pinky" over half a century ago, with a black girl passing for white. Moreover, the movie's story line seems irrational. The main character, a light-complexioned black man, passes himself off as white in order to get ahead in a white world. While it's a questionable ethical decision, at least it's credible so far. But then he consciously chooses to call himself a Jew. What sense does that make? He wants to get ahead in the world by pretending to be a member of another oppressed minority? He could have chosen to be of almost any race or nationality. Why Jewish? Of course, Roth is of Jewish ancestry. Could this be a form of ironic reverse discrimination he was engaging in or simply a play to his own vanity? The movie never makes these things clear.

In any case, despite whatever convictions the novel expressed, the film isn't really about themes or morals or values, so much as it is about people and relationships, and it's here that the story runs into even more serious trouble. There isn't a normal, likable, or even believable person in the whole affair.

The main character is Coleman Silk (Hopkins/Miller), except in flashback an older, middle-aged African American living a secret life as a white professor at a small New England college. He is described as being one of the first Jews ever to become a Professor of Classics and a Dean of Faculty at an American institution. And apparently he owes his success to his changing his identity (and becoming Jewish?) and turning his back on his own people, family, and race.

Worse than his hypocrisy, however, is Silk's attitude. He's a blowhard and a verbal bully, temperamental, arrogant, and loud. As the movie opens he's been accused of racism because he referred to several of his students as "spooks" who were missing from his class. He had never seen them before and was calling them "spooks" as in "ghosts" because they were invisible to him. What he didn't know was that the students were black (talk about coincidence), and they lodge charges against him of racism. This is supposed to be another example of irony, but Silk keeps quiet about his own racial origins and instead resigns in protest. Arrogant to the end. If Silk represents for Roth some kind of postwar emergence of African Americans and/or Jews in the late forties and fifties, the import of the symbolism escapes me.

Silk's wife of many years dies of trauma brought on by the events, and Silk blames the school for her death. Then he meets several new folks. The first is Nathan Zuckerman (Sinise), a onetime promising Jewish author with writer's block who has given up on life and retired to a cabin in the woods. Silk wants Zuckerman to write up his life story for him, but Zuckerman refuses. Alternatively, they become good friends over nights of gin rummy. Zuckerman goes on to narrate the film, presumably as a stand-in for Roth, as the Zuckerman character has been an alter-ego protagonist in many of Roth's stories.

The other person Silk meets is Faunia Farley (Kidman), a janitor at the college and a part-time farmhand. She's half Silk's age, but they decide to have a romance. Both admit they're in it for the sex alone, Silk saying that Viagra has done wonders to create a new life for him. Yet another "new" life, I might add. I would have thought that just the sight of Ms. Kidman would have been enough, but maybe he's more tired than he looks. Anyway, the young and beauteous Ms. Farley is about as opposite of Silk as she can be--in background, education, and outlook on life. Plus, she carries a load of melodramatic baggage with her that we learn about as the tale goes on. And, remember, the sex is great.