Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
The Human Stain (2003)
Director: Robert Benton
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
A professor of classics at a respected New England university, Coleman Silk would seem to be on life's home straight, until he loses his job to political correctness, his wife to a heart attack and his dignity to waitressing floozie Faunia Farley. This dramatic fall from grace is occasioned by Coleman's use of the word 'spook' - he claims innocence of any modern, racist connotations, but to no avail. There's an underlying irony here, but Coleman is the only one who appreciates it, and he's keeping quiet... which puts the critic in an invidious position. What price a dramatic revelation some 30 minutes in? Suffice to say, this would-be prestigious literary adaptation, from a novel by Philip Roth, is lovingly crafted, but has fundamental problems. Hopkins is convincing for about half an hour; it's not that you can't buy his Coleman, just that you can't believe he's even distantly related to Wentworth Miller, who plays the same character in flashback with a deal more conviction. But Nicole Kidman is even worse, miscast and mannered as the trashy Faunia, a character lugging even more dead weight in her emotional baggage. It says something that the most romantic scene is a slow dance between Hopkins and Gary Sinise, as the narrator, Nathan Zuckerman. Director Benton got small town Americana emphatically right in Nobody's Fool, but he's defeated here by a novel with too much back-story. The movie sinks under its lofty ambitions.Author: TCh
Cast & crew
Director: Robert Benton
Producer: Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi, Scott Steindorff
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise, Wentworth Miller, Jacinda Barrett, Harry Lennix, Clark Gregg, Anna Deavere Smith, Lizan Mitchell, Kerry Washington, Phyllis Newman full cast
Duration: 105 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now