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MINI MOVIE REVIEW:
"The Human Stain" features some of the best acting ever seen by four of our nation's finest actors in a movie
about a man who has spent a lifetime living a lie as he has long before rejected his family and his Black heritage in order
to pass for White.
Now a highly respected dean of literature at a New England college, he finds himself hoist on a petard of political correctness
when an offhand comment is construed as being racist and his colleagues, who believe him to be White, refuse to support him
against this otherwise insupportable accusation. In the heat of passion at their lack of support, he quits in a huff. These
traumatic actions cause the death of his wife, and he now finds himself alone and seemingly friendless.
He forms an attachment with a local 34 year old divorcee who is as much at loose ends as he is. They cling to each other
in a relationship that is primarily sexual, a relationship that becomes ever more questionable as time goes on due to the
wide disparity in their intellect and lifestyles.
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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
"The Human Stain" at its heart is an updating of the Douglas Sirk cinema potboiler, "Imitation of Life"(1959).
Unfortunately, that movie said it better and covered the subject matter better in spite of this movie having the advantage
of 50 years of hind sight and some of the best actors in the business.
Hopkins and Kidman give the performances of their lifetimes in this weak and muddled movie about race, sex, and revenge.
Since almost everything about the movie is superior in every way, then the blame of necessity must fall on the author, Philip
Roth, of the novel for a muddled story line that lacks both cohesiveness and plausibility.
For those who claim that they were miscast in these roles, I say "Bah, Humbug to you!" Are you now going to
claim that these two fine actors can never appear with credibility in another film without any of us thinking, "Oh, there
is Kidman or Hopkins"? Can't the same be said about every movie that Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart or Katherine Hepburn
appeared in and yet we never penalize them for this?
I would hate to have to feel that Nicole Kidman will have to wear a prosthetic nose or otherwise alter her appearance
in any new film in order for her to appear believable and credible. She dresses down for her role in this movie and she looks
every inch the trailer trash that she is. The further rather bigoted class-based assumption, which lacks validity and needs
no rebuttal here, is that every blue collar worker in this country is short and unattractive.
Furthermore, Anthony Hopkins must have gained weight for his role, as he looks like a very barrel of a man and what we
all would assume a former boxer might look like when in his sixties.
No, my quibbles with "The Human Stain" are certainly not with the casting, which is first rate, extraordinary
even. The camera shots in this movie spend a great deal of time in close up shots of the faces of these actors and, by so
doing, capture and make even more intense the emotional trauma that each is suffering.
Lesser actors could not have pulled this off in every instance as these fine actors do. This is the great pleasure of
"The Human Stain, which is to see an ensemble cast of first rate actors go through their paces and elevate an otherwise
less than successful movie.
And that's just the problem with this movie, as the incredible acting hides for a while the many flaws in the story. At
some point a normally intelligent person has to come to the realization that the relationship between Coleman Silk (Anthony
Hopkins) and Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman) is doomed and that no amount of cinema theatrics can get anyone to believe that
their relationship is believable or sustainable.
And the sustainability aspect is the point under discussion here, for anyone can accept a fling between and older man
and a lovely, much younger woman who becomes sexually available to him. I don't care how much Viagra (which is discussed in
this movie) can momentarily obscure the fact that older men can't and don't function like sexual athletes anymore. No, what
I found preposterous in this movie is its concentration on their relationship as primarily a sexual one to the exclusion of
practically everything else.
An old man can momentarily leave his brain at the door, but for how long can a brilliant college professor dissuade himself
that he has a brain and neglect the fact that any relationship that he enters into must have a foundation built on something
other than sex?
Silk takes Farley to a fancy restaurant, but she storms out when Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise, Philip Roth's alter ego)
unexpectedly shows up. Well, of course, she was blind sided by his appearance, but so what? Why should each shame the other
by this needless display of emotional theatrics and general inconsiderateness?
Later Silk takes Farley to a concert given in a chapel on campus and it is clear that he is in heaven with the music and
it is equally clear that she couldn't care less. Farley has totally rejected her original upper middle class upbringing due
to having been raped many years before by her stepfather and has chosen to live in the gutter of life ever since. That may
be her choice, but it's a stupid one nonetheless, as it is a "bite off your nose to spite your face" kind of way
to live your life.
My general observation is that no young, fertile woman in her right mind would ever hook up with a man 30 years older
than herself. I know that it happens, but only because the woman is either damaged goods or that she has an agenda, or both.
In this case, Shaunia Farley has both, as she is a victim of familial rape and also has an ex-husband, Lester Farley (Ed Harris),
a jealous homicidal maniac who has learned how to kill all too well in Viet Nam. Her agenda is made less clear in this film,
but certainly financial security and protection come to my mind as rather obvious possibilities.
I would also like to say friendship, but this movie unwisely has chosen to spend precious little time on this aspect of
their relationship. They are never seen doing ordinary little things together like reading or walking through the woods or
shopping at a store. And Coleman and Faunia also don't talk enough in this movie. No matter how much sex they can have, it
still can only occupy a minor percentage of their daily activity. We don't see what they do the rest of the time, and their
normal conversations and the routine of daily living are things that are missing from this movie.
Worse yet, these two are quite unsympathetic, even unlikable people. Coleman Silk is at his core a bigot and a liar who
has cruelly spurned the people who love him. His bringing his naive White college girlfriend from Minnesota home to meet his
mother without forewarning either of them shows a monstrous insensitivity to both of them. His later telling his mother that
she and the rest of his family will now be "dead" to him so that he can move into the world as a White man is a
scene very painful to watch with its heavy emotional pathos.
Faunia Farley is, to put it bluntly, a foul mouthed tramp who exhibits little in this movie to make her more appealing.
Both of these characters have buried their vulnerability so far beneath their hide bound surfaces that they seem less than
human, less than real people. In short, damaged goods. In truth, stained humans.
No matter how fine the acting, this does not make for a pleasant movie to see. When we are at the movies it is nice to
have someone to identify with, someone to care for, someone to live vicariously through the experiences that we see on the
screen. There is no such person available in "The Human Stain," at least not anyone who lives in the present of
this movie.
Finally, a comment, a high compliment even, must be given to the people who play the members of the Silk family during
the Fifties. These actors have risen to the challenge of their latter day personalities by acting every bit as well as do
Hopkins, Kidman, Harris and Sinise. Anna Deavere Smith is especially touching as Coleman's tortured mother who is crushed
by being rejected by her son. And Wentworth Miller is her equal as an ambitious son who is driven by the prevailing societal
bigotry of the day to create for himself the fiction of being a White man whose parents and siblings are "deceased."
In fact, the flashbacks are the only truly compelling part of this movie and one of the main reasons that this picture
garners a B- grade from me rather than something less in a movie that has been savaged by other critics as witnessed by its
very low 39% critical approval rating. This is a shockingly low positive rating for a highbrow, Oscar contending Hollywood
offering.
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
NOTE:
This movie starts on the campus of Athena College, but for the purposes of this review, I am going to present this story
in chronological order. Much of the movie is spent moving back and forth between the Forties and Fifties and the much later
Nineties.
It is during the 1940's and dinner time at the home of the Silk family, a very handsome Black family living a life comparable
to lower middle class Whites with hopes that the Silk children will get even further in life than their parents have. The
older son is home from the military and the younger son, Coleman (Wentworth Miller), is in his senior year at high school.
An incredibly bright and talented young man, he has a four point grade point average and is a champion boxer sure to get a
collegiate scholarship at whichever Black college he applies to.
His collegiate ambitions, in fact, are the point of discussion that evening. His father (Harry J. Lennox) runs a tight
ship and will brook no opposition to his decision that his son will go to Howard University, a college reserved exclusively
for Blacks. Unfortunately, Coleman's boxing coach has put other ideas in his head, telling him that he can easily get an athletic
scholarship at Pitt University, but only if he applies as a White person and a Jewish one at that. Naturally, Coleman doesn't
mention this aspect of his collegiate chances to his proud father.
His son's opposition at having to go to Howard infuriates Mr. Silk, but their conversation is interrupted by his having
to leave for work. His loving wife (Anna Deveare Smith) points out that he doesn't want to be late, so Mr. Silk leaves for
his job as a waiter in a railroad restaurant car. A complaining customer that evening causes more trouble than he anticipates
when his loud verbal protestations about his improperly cooked fish causes Mr. Silk to fall to the floor of the car, dead
from a heart attack.
Mrs. Silk continues with her husband's attitudes that Coleman should go to Howard, but Coleman has other ideas. A very
light skinned man who can and has easily passed for White, he decides that the only way to distance himself from his racial
heritage is to enlist in the Navy. One of the papers asks for his racial identity, and, after some thought, Coleman checks
the box marked "White."
A few years later Coleman is at Pitt University as a star wrestler. His boxing coach instructs him to take eight rounds
to defeat his Black opponent, but Coleman pummels the guy into the ropes in one short, brutal round. His angry coach later
confronts him in the locker room and Coleman replies that he didn't want to spend any more time in the ring with that "N***r."
He has left his Black heritage far behind and there is no more telling aspect of this than his romance with a tall, blonde
Nordic girl from lily white Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Steena Paulson (Jacinda Barrett) is curious about her new lover's life
as a Jew, not as a Black. They become very close romantically and sexually, which is natural as both are intelligent, ambitious,
and very attractive. In a store one day while Steena waits outside, the clerk, a young Black girl, asks him if he isn't the
Coleman Silk that went to her high school. And if he is, why is that blonde girl waiting for him outside? Coleman brushes
her off.
As his relationship with Steena deepens, Coleman decides to bring her home to meet his mother. His cruelty plainly shows,
though, as he neglects to tell Steena, whom he professes to love, that she is about to meet his Black mother, and he likewise
shows great disrespect to his mother by not telling her that his girlfriend whom he is bringing home to dinner is White.
Needless to say, the dinner is an unmitigated disaster, and Coleman is unable to coax Steena out of her repulsion at his
deceit as they ride the train back to Pitt. His protestations are to no avail as she tearfully dumps him.
Shamed at having been rejected because of his skin color, which had never before been an issue in his romantic relationships,
Coleman tells his long suffering mother that he is going to live life as a White person, a Jew, and that she and the rest
of the members of his family will be considered to be dead.
She asks him about his kids after he marries, and what will happen if one of them is Black? Coleman doesn't answer her.
She also adds that she knows that her sad new lot in life will be that of a grandmother who waits by the telephone for her
son to call, telling her the time that he will be passing through a train station and that she will be welcome to come and
sit silently as she watches her grandchildren pass by...
Coleman walks out the door leaving behind a very heartbroken women sitting in her chair crying softly to herself.
Flash forward 40 years to the present day when Clinton is President and the topic du jour is Monica Lewinsky and her stained
dress. Coleman Silk is a dean of literature at Athena College and a celebrated scholar. While giving a lecture one day about
the Greek god Achilles midway through the school term, he inquires of his class as to the reality of two long absent students
whom he has yet to see in attendance at his class. "What are they? Spooks or students?"
It develops that both students are Black and that one of them, a woman, files a complaint with the school board. Coleman
appears before the board, a composition of his peers including one Black professor who owes his career to Silk, to answer
these charges. "The first definition of a spook," he says, as he holds the dictionary before him, "is that
of a ghost or a phantasm."
Yes, they reply, but the second definition is a derogatory racial epithet directed towards Blacks. "How could this
comment be construed as a racially insensitive comment when I have never met these two individuals, and I certainly couldn't
know they were Black?" he replies.
The Athena College Board exhibits very little backbone in this Clintonian era of political correctness run amok and refuses
to back Silk, so he quits in a huff. (I find this shocking turn of events to be somewhat illogical as Silk no doubt has tenure
and, furthermore, there would be many other colleges and universities who would love to have a Jewish scholar with his literary
reputation.)
Nonetheless, the die is cast, and he is an unemployed man by the time he gets home to Iris (Phyllis Newman), his Jewish
wife of many years. (A footnote to this sad turn of events is that it is obvious that they have never had any children.) Iris
does not take the news well. In fact, she collapses on the floor and dies on the spot just as Coleman's father had done many
years before in that railroad diner car.
A few weeks later, Coleman begs a postal employee to stay open two minutes past closing so that he can get his letters
mailed. She is reluctant to let him in, but she then recognizes him as the professor who recently lost his wife. Her memory
is made acute by the fact that she is also a part time janitor at the school and thus has a better understanding than most
of the townspeople as to what is happening there.
A few days later Coleman is able to repay this good turn by rescuing her after her car broke down and she is standing
by it with the hood raised waiting for help along a quiet country lane in the snowy, wintry cold. He drives her home to a
local farm where she has a third job milking the cows when the owners are gone, a job that allows her to live above the barn
rent free. She introduces herself as Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman) and asks Coleman if "he wants to come up?" in
a sultry tone as she exits the car with a cigarette dangling from her sensuous lips.
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