Movie Review The Human Stain

The Human Stain (2003) 

Directed by Robert Benton 

Written by Nicholas Meyer 

Starring Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise 

Release Date October 31st, 2003 

Published November 4th, 2003 

This is truly one of the worst titles you've ever seen. It's made worse by the fact that it is only part metaphor and does in fact refer to the gutter-minded definition your so ashamed to ascribe it. In his 2000 novel The Human Stain, writer Phillip Roth makes it clear that his title refers to that infamous blue dress owned by Monica Lewinsky. Yes there is a deeper metaphorical meaning to the title for the books characters but it's the Monica definition that people come away with and in so doing, forget that there is a rather compelling drama behind that title.

For the film adaptation of Roth's novel, director Robert Benton may have been better off without the literal title. The film is all about the metaphor with little mention of Roth's contempt for the Clinton impeachment and to his book’s first act plot point. You shouldn't judge a book (or movie) by it's title but in this case it's hard not to. So many people will avoid seeing this film because of that title that it renders the whole thing meaningless.

Coleman Silk (Sir Anthony Hopkins) has, in his time as Dean of Classics at Berkshire College, turned the sleepy small town institution into the shadow of an Ivy League University. In so doing he has made many friends and many more enemies. Therefore, it's not surprising then that when he makes one seemingly minor mistake on the eve of his retirement that his enemies seize upon it to get rid of him early.

Coleman's mistake was referring to a pair of students who never showed up in his class as "spooks.” Coleman's reference was to the ghostly definition of the word but because the missing students were African-Americans a complaint was filed and some people seized on the other definition of the word spooks as a racial epithet. And so it is that the very people Coleman himself hired at the college that shove him out the door.

The controversy is ironic because Coleman himself is African-American though you would not know it to look at him. He has for most of his 71 years passed himself off as Jewish and because of his light skin has never had to admit to anyone he is black. Coleman never told his wife of more than 40 years or his colleagues at the college or his closest friend a writer, Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), who after Coleman's death must piece his life together from the scraps of lies and half truths he left behind.

Coleman's death is another great source of controversy. After quitting his job, losing his wife to an embolism and becoming a pariah in his small town, Coleman takes up a scandalous affair with Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman) a woman half his age, divorced and working as a janitor at the college. Faunia's ex-husband Les (Ed Harris) is a Vietnam veteran and highly unstable.

The situation that Coleman has placed himself in is one that is obviously dangerous. It's a situation that someone of his dignity and intelligence should never find himself in, as his friends including Nathan and his Lawyer Nelson Primus (Clark Gregg) remind him constantly. However as Faunia tells him when they first meet, action is the enemy of thought. Coleman acts without thinking allowing lust to overcome logic. Whether or not Coleman and Faunia can achieve something beyond lust is one of the film’s central questions.

Parallel to the main love story is Coleman's history. Flashbacks take us back 50 years to when Coleman (played in the past by newcomer Wentworth Miller) first decided his life would be easier if lived as a white Jew. While attending school in New York City, Coleman meets a beautiful Midwestern blonde named Steena Paulson (Jacinda Barrett). Steena has no idea that Coleman is African-American, she assumes he is Jewish which explains his ethnic looks. It seems like true love but when Coleman brings Steena home to meet his mother, he gets his first lesson in why his life might be easier if he pretended he was someone else.

The backstory is actually far more interesting than the central love story. Wentworth Miller and Jacinda Barrett light up the screen with a fiery chemistry. Ms. Barrett is particularly surprising as she pulls off the wide-eyed innocence of a mid twentieth century Midwesterner. Until now she has been cast as sexpots, typecast from her time as a one the over-sexed simpletons on MTV's The Real World (she was in the London cast).

Of course, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman make strong impressions, they are terrific actors. Their plot however is astoundingly dreary. Any momentary light that shines in their relationship is punished and it's only in the flashbacks to Coleman and Steena, before she dumped him, that we get any reprieve from the constant onslaught of misery.

Director Robert Benton has a knack for capturing older male characters preparing to conquer their old age. It was Benton who directed Paul Newman to his best late years performance in Nobody's Fool. Here he does well by Sir Anthony Hopkins by giving the legendary actor his first romantic lead role. Unfortunately, as great as Mr. Hopkins is, I never believed he and Wentworth Miller were playing the same character. After leaving his job at the college Coleman's connection to his past is left only as an ironic passage in his life. The film shifts it's focus to his relationship with Faunia which has nothing to do with race. It's an entirely different plot.

As for the allusion to the Lewinsky scandal, that was far more the book’s concern than the films. It is referred on more than one occasion and as in the book it is brought up as an example of political correctness run amok. It runs parallel to the ridiculousness of Coleman's own persecution for his racist remark that wasn't racist. Clinton's indiscretion was bad but not impeachable. 

The novel used Coleman and Faunia's many problems to magnify why Clinton-Lewinsky was such a meaningless endeavor, the movie makes the same reference and both seem heavy-handed to those of us who already realize what a bunch of trumped up ridiculousness Clinton-Lewinsky was. Of course issues of race, and death and family are more important than whether or not Bill Clinton got a BJ in the Oval Office. We know that! Thankfully the film doesn't linger on the point.

I would have liked to see more about Coleman growing up. Pretending to be white while coming of age in the 50's and 60’s with the rise of the Civil Rights movement, that has more inherent drama than any semi-controversial small town May-December romance ever could. Someday someone should revisit Roth's novel and extrapolate on the ideas put forth about Coleman's youth. That sounds like a movie I would like to see.