| The Human Stain | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Robert Benton |
| Screenplay by | Nicholas Meyer |
| Based on | The Human Stain byPhilip Roth |
| Produced by | |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Jean-Yves Escoffier |
| Edited by | Christopher Tellefsen |
| Music by | Rachel Portman |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Miramax Films (Worldwide) Concorde Filmverleih (Germany) |
Release dates |
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Running time | 106 minutes |
| Countries |
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| Language | English |
| Budget | $30 million[2] |
| Box office | $24.9 million[2] |
The Human Stain is a 2003 Americandrama film directed byRobert Benton. Its screenplay, byNicholas Meyer, is based on thenovel of the same name byPhilip Roth. The film starsAnthony Hopkins,Nicole Kidman,Gary Sinise, andEd Harris.
In the late 1990s, writerNathan Zuckerman has settled in a lakesideNew England cabin following his second divorce and a battle withprostate cancer. His quiet life is interrupted by Coleman Silk, a former dean and professor of classics at local Athena College, who was forced to resign after being accused of making aracist remark in class. Coleman's wife died suddenly following the scandal, and he wants to avenge his loss of career and companion by writing a book about the events with Nathan's assistance.
The project is placed on the back burner when Coleman has an affair with a younger woman, named Faunia Farley, a semi-literate who supports herself by working menial jobs, including at the college. Their relationship is threatened by the faculty members who forced Coleman from his job and by Faunia's ex-husband, Lester, a mentally unbalancedVietnam War veteran, who blames her for the deaths of their children in an accident. Flashbacks of Coleman's life reveal his secret; he is an African American, who has "passed" as a Jewish man for most of his adult life.
The film debuted at theVenice Film Festival. It was shown at theToronto International Film Festival, theBergen International Film Festival, and the Hollywood Film Festival before its theatrical release in the US.
The film grossed $5,381,908 in the United States and Canada, and $19,481,896 internationally for a total worldwide box office of $24,863,304 against a budget of $30 million.[2]
On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes 42% of 154 reviews were positive, with an average rating of 5.5/10. The site's consensus reads, "Though the acting is fine, the leads are miscast, and the story is less powerful on screen than on the page."[3] OnMetacritic it has a score of 57% based on reviews from 39 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[4]
In his review inThe New York Times,A. O. Scott called it "an honorable B+ term paper of a movie: sober, scrupulous and earnestly respectful of its literary source ... The filmmakers explicate Mr. Roth's themes with admirable clarity and care and observe his characters with delicate fondness, but they cannot hope to approximate the brilliance and rapacity of his voice, which holds all the novel's disparate elements together. Without the active intervention of Mr. Roth's intelligence ... the story fails to cohere ... At its best—which also tends to be at its quietest—The Human Stain allows you both to care about its characters and to think about the larger issues that their lives represent. Its deepest flaw is an inability to link those moments of empathy and insight into a continuous drama, to suggest that the characters' lives keep going when they are not on screen."[5]
Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times observed, "We have to suspend disbelief over the casting, but that's easier since we can believe the stories of these people. Not many movies probe into matters of identity or adaptation. Most movie characters are likeGreek gods andcomic book heroes: We learn their roles and powers at the beginning of the story, and they never change. Here are complex, troubled, flawed people, brave enough to breathe deeply and take one more risk with their lives."[6]
In theSan Francisco Chronicle,Mick LaSalle called it "a mediocre movie ... [that] falls victim to a fatal lack of narrative drive, suspense and drama. Kidman and Hopkins are wrong for their roles, and that, combined with a pervading inevitability, cuts the film off from any sustained vitality. The result is something admirable but lifeless."[7]
David Stratton ofVariety described it as "an intelligent adaptation of Philip Roth's arguably unfilmable novel powered by two eye-catching performances ... A key problem Benton is unable to avoid is that Hopkins and Miller don't look (or talk) the least bit like one another. Miller, who gives a strong, muted performance, convinces as a light-skinned African-American in a way Hopkins never does, which is not to suggest that the Welsh-born actor doesn't give another intelligent, powerful portrayal. It's just that the believability gap looms large."[8]
InRolling Stone,Peter Travers said, "Hopkins and Kidman ... are both as mesmerizing as they are miscast ...The Human Stain is heavy going. It's the flashes of dramatic lightning that make it a trip worth taking."[9]
The Times of London called it "sapping and unbelievablemelodrama ... an unforgivably turgid lecture aboutpolitical correctness."[10]
The soundtrack toThe Human Stain was released September 23, 2003.
| No. | Title | Artist | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Opening Credits" | Rachel Portman | 3:11 |
| 2. | "Iris Dies/Library Coleman Waits for Faunia" | Rachel Portman | 2:29 |
| 3. | "It's in the Mail/End Credits" | Rachel Portman | 7:03 |
| 4. | "The Two Urns/Father Dies" | Rachel Portman | 2:31 |
| 5. | "Navy Recruiting" | Rachel Portman | 1:01 |
| 6. | "Steena Rejects Coleman" | Rachel Portman | 1:28 |
| 7. | "Audobon Society/The Crow" | Rachel Portman | 2:35 |
| 8. | "Coleman's Funeral/Faunia Dances" | Rachel Portman | 1:14 |
| 9. | "The Accident" | Rachel Portman | 2:46 |
| 10. | "You Think Like a Prisoner" | Rachel Portman | 2:05 |
| 11. | "Frozen Lake" | Rachel Portman | 1:36 |
| 12. | "It's in the Mail/End Credits (Rewrite)" | Rachel Portman | 7:03 |
| Total length: | 35:02[11] | ||
