Word: stain
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...Human Stain...
Based on the novel by Philip Roth, The Human Stain follows Silk through four major stages of self-identification: anger, denial, acceptance and confession. It’s not Faunia who reveals Silk’s secrets to us, however, but the reticent Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), a reclusive writer whom Silk coaxes back to literary life. Part investigative journalist, part close friend, it is this would-be biographer who tells his story, discovers the truth behind Silk’s carefully engineered identity, and decides to write a book about Silk’s twisted and difficult journey from...
Much like Silk himself, Benton’s film is a prisoner of its own ambitions; it falls victim to its literal devotion to Roth’s novel. For most of its meandering minutes, The Human Stain remains as glacial as its scenery, too cool and too detached; it never packs a genuine emotional, much less social or political, punch. Even Farely’s bitter tears, shed as she mourns the wreck of her life, fail to generate much sympathy for her character. Perhaps it’s the uneven pacing; perhaps it’s the inherently...
...film, scripted by Nicholas Meyer, begins stiffly, concealing its true nature. But when Coleman opens the lair of his vulnerability to two strangers--the writer Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise) and a local louche woman named Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman)--The Human Stain warms to its characters' decency and neediness. It blooms in poignancy with flashback scenes of Coleman's '40s family--the wise mother (beautiful Anna Deavere Smith) and upright father (Harry Lennix) he disowns--and finds anchor in his affair with Faunia. "Granted, she is not my great love," Coleman says. "But she sure as hell is my last...
...attended to the subtlest emotional vectors. He sees that though this film's theme may be racial prejudice, it is really the story of a man deciding, late in life, to love the unknown--what is beyond books, pride, even self. To learn that lesson is to turn a stain into a blessing. --By Richard Corliss