One frustrating “Stain”

The Human Stain

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

The Human Stain

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

Directed by Robert Benton

“The Human Stain” is one of the most frustrating near-great films in recent memory. It’s not the sum of its parts, but has parts too good to be missed: its performances, Robert Benton’s smooth direction and its remarkable balance – through most of the film – of bitter cynicism and poignant emotion.

Too bad Benton and screenwriter Nicholas Meyer just can’t get all the elements and tones of Philip Roth’s novel of the same name to stick together on screen.

The downfall of Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins), as told to us by his friend Nathan (Gary Sinise), begins with the man being fired from his teaching position for allegedly racist remarks – he refers to some absentee students, who he doesn’t even know are African-American, as “spooks,” as in “ghosts.” At the height of the controversy, Coleman’s wife suffers a fatal embolism; Coleman considers the righteous people who dismissed him her murderers.

Months later, he stumbles into an affair with the alluring Faunia (Nicole Kidman), a troubled janitor/post office worker/milkmaid half his age who shares with him her tragic past. During this, what we know from the film’s first scene to be his last love, Coleman is moved to face his own demons, to relive his most painful love. As he remembers, we learn the film’s sad irony: Coleman is actually a light-skinned African American who’s pretended to be white for most of his life.

The film is primarily a portrait of a life shaped by racism. There is but a single happy moment – an awkward but pure bit of joy shared by Coleman and Nathan early in the film. Otherwise, the film is rather depressing.

Benton directs with a surprisingly sure hand and a classy, laidback style. Composer Rachel Portman and cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier lend plenty of elegance.

The cast presents a dichotomy: Hopkins and Kidman are simultaneously excellent and miscast. Their performances are affecting, just as long as you can get past the fact that Kidman is too graceful and Hopkins too white.

The film’s problematic structure and resolution are its biggest issue. Its sad parable about racism, its stabs at empty-headed political correctness – to which the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal serves as a backdrop – and its vague suspense plot, featuring a spectacularly dangerous Ed Harris as Faunia’s loony Vietnam vet ex-husband, struggle to merge. The filmmakers seem unsure which story to end on; the resolution is unfocused and lacks the resonance that the rest of the film works hard to create. The character of Nathan, our narrator, is a casualty; he ends up a glaring loose end.

“The Human Stain” falls short of greatness, but comes close enough to make it recommendable.