drbloodscoffinblog

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Warning: there are spoilers throughout. For
this reason some might prefer reading the review after seeing the film.

”The Human Stain” is a messy melodrama. It’s much like but not
as accomplished as Douglas Sirk’s masterful Imitation of Life, where racism
in society plays a heavy role in influencing one’s self-esteem. It’s stylishly
directed by Robert Benton (”Kramer vs. Kramer”) with a true allegiance
paid to Philip Roth’s cunningly aesthetic 2000 novel. The Human Stain is
the last of a trilogy—American Pastoral and I Married a Communist—whose
themes deal with the split in the national psyche through loss and grief.
Its title is taken from the sordid Monica Lewinsky incident with the prez.
The screenplay is by Nicholas Meyer and the lavish cinematography is by
Jean-Yves Escoffier. It should be noted that the film is dedicated to Mr.
Escoffier who died after the film wrapped. 

Roth’s book investigates with a savage irony such topics as identity,
sex, college politics, lies, race and culture. The way these topics unfolded
as literary devices make it more suitable in a book than a movie, nevertheless
despite a few gigantic missteps the film held my attention throughout and
I was always tuned into the characters. It even had some surprising moments
of raw power, as it throws many ideas against the wall and some resonated.
The Human Stain uses one of the lead characters, Nathan Zuckerman (Gary
Sinise), to be Roth’s alter ego and the narrator-within-the-story. Through
this convention we learn the story of a recently widowed Jewish classics
professor of distinction, at the prestigious but tiny Athena College in
Massachusetts, Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins). He was born black in East
Orange, New Jersey, but has passed himself off as white most of his adult
life. 

The film begins from an incident that reflects on how uptight American
society is about race relations and its institutions that cover up their
moral blankness by dumb attempts to be politically correct. The story is
set in the summer of 1998 and continues through the winter. That was when
the President Clinton scandal broke over whether he had sex with Monica
Lewinsky and his lie about the affair got the sanctimonious right-wing
to call for his impeachment, while most in the country saw this as funny
material for the comics. Professor Silk’s problem is somehow linked with
that call for political correctness. The respected dean who helped the
college become a great scholarly institution, refers to two absent students
in his lecture as “spooks,” meaning ghosts. He is unaware that the two
students are black and when the students bring him up on charges of using
racial slurs, his weak-kneed colleagues absurdly refuse to back him. In
protest he quits. At home, when he tells this to his wife Iris, she gets
so upset that she dies in his arms from the strain. 

Wanting to get his story out and get revenge on his colleagues Coleman
tracks down the gentle reclusive writer Nathan Zuckerman, living in solitude
after two divorces and surviving prostrate cancer, in a nearby lakeside
cabin. He tells the writer he can give him a juicy story that will cure
his writer’s block, but the writer for the time being chooses to become
friends and gin rummy partners and share a musical interest in a radio
program broadcasting big band tunes from the 1940s. In one glorious scene
they dance to Fred Astaire’s “Cheek to Cheek.” But it’s not until the film’s
conclusion that Nathan understands that Coleman helped him live again and
feels obligated to tell his friend’s story.

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The 70-ish Coleman also begins another new friendship at the same
time he met Nathan. He gives the thirtysomething milkmaid and college and
post office janitor Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman) a car ride and before
you know it they’re in bed. Coleman in a scene that appears more like a
TV ad, tells Nathan he owes his potency to Viagra. Faunia becomes an unnecessary
plot device and this chemistry free and unbelievable relationship brings
the film down to an absurd level it almost never recovers from. It seems
Faunia also has a few secrets to lay down, as she tells about splitting
at 14 from her wealthy mother and step-father because mom didn’t believe
her when told she was sexually abused. Faunia has lived a troubled life
since, refusing wealth and ending up married to a deranged, bigoted, ex-husband,
Lester (Ed Harris), who served as a killing machine in Vietnam and has
repeatedly beaten her. She also has to live with the regret that her two
children died in an accidental fire under her watch. Faunia lives in fear
that Lester, despite a court restraining order, keeps stalking her in his
red pickup truck, as Coleman fails to comfort her even as he bravely boasts
about once being a pretty good boxer and will protect her. Kidman deserves
a medal for going through the scene where she lays her heart out to a crow,
a scene that has Ed Wood Jr. written all over it. Even though Kidman can’t
save that kind of sloppy dialogue from biting back, she nevertheless makes
it less dreadful than it could have been. 

In any case, Coleman forgets about getting revenge on his former
college turncoats as he turns full attention to the affair. Can you blame
the old geezer?

We learn about Coleman’s early life through flashbacks, as he’s played
as a young man by Wentworth Miller–the biracial British actor. Much is
made of his skill in boxing, and that he was mentored by a Jewish doctor–who
might be his real father. Since he doesn’t look like anyone in his family,
I guess that might be one way of explaining his light appearance. 

In one of the flashbacks we learn of his first-love for a blonde
Midwesterner of Danish stock, Steena Paulsson (Jacinda Barrett), attending
college in NYC, and how she breaks with him because even though she loves
him she can’t go through with marrying a Negro. This is resolved when he
cruelly brings her to meet mom without mentioning his background, and she
gallantly sits through the dinner while in a state of shock. After that
rejection he joins the navy to get away and fills out the application that
he’s white. From thereon he lives the rest of his life with a well-ochestrated
lie, never even telling his wife the truth. 

Coleman’s modern tragedy is compared to a Greek tragedy, where all
problems are related to man’s relationship with women. 

That Mr. Hopkins as an unrevealed black man and Ms. Kidman as a sullen
janitor might be miscast, should not take away from how effective they
were in their glossy performances. They were still fun to watch. In any
case, casting anyone for the Coleman Silk part would have been questioned
for obvious reasons. That Miller does not resemble Hopkins is apparent,
but might not matter if you can just put the resemblance issue aside and 
enjoy the solid performance given by Mr. Miller. It might also help to
realize that racial identity is more a psychological and cultural question
than one of DNA. The film’s strongest supporting performance is reserved
for Coleman’s forthright mother Anna Deavere Smith, who plays the Juanita
Moore role in Imitation of Life and gives the film the honesty and
force no other character could deliver in the same astonishingly magnetic
way she does in drilling home the point of racial identity and being true
to one’s self. For her astute summation of the events alone, the film was
worth catching. Though many parts of the film were spotty and awkward and
there never seemed to be an easy point to draw from the whole, nevertheless
the characterizations and the inflammatory subject about racism should
give one much to ponder long after the film is over.