Review of
The Human Stain,
movie on DVD
Five out of five stars
At the opening,
this film seems to be yet another remake of the older man falling for a flawed,
much younger woman. Anthony Hopkins plays Coleman Silk, an aged professor of
the classics at a prestiguous university. His stated ethnicity is Jewish and
through the power of his personality and intellect, he has turned the
university into an academic powerhouse.
However, Silk
runs afoul of the politically correct police when he talks in class about two
students on his class roster that have never attended. He openly asks the class
if they are “spooks,” meaning of course that they are ghosts. Since he has
never seen the two people, Silk does not know that they are African-American,
so he is brought before a review committee and accused of racism. Furious at
their indictment, Silk resigns in a huff and leaves the university.
When his wife
of many years dies, Silk is naturally lonely and encounters a women in her early
thirties played by Nicole Kidman. They quickly become lovers, but the viewer
learns very quickly that this woman is severely emotionally compromised with a
murderous ex-husband.
Despite the
power of this aspect of the story, there is a far deeper undercurrent in the
life of Silk. It is a secret that he has kept from everyone for decades. While
the reader understands why he would take the course of action that he did, it
is also clear that it is a slow-growing cancer on his psyche. This turns what
would otherwise been a good, steamy thriller about an older man trying to live
again into an outstanding movie.
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