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The Human Stain If you hang around film critics
this time of year, you will sometimes hear the phrase "Oscar bait." It
is never a compliment. It refers to a movie that is manipulative, pretentious,
and angling to sucker Oscar voters. It usually stars famous ACTORS, looking
deep into the camera as if their very souls were on display; and it features
a score that is syrupy and symphonic at the same time, all the better to
wring tears out of potential audiences. The movie usually features tragedy
of some kind (actors need their Oscar
This year, Miramax Studios is force-feeding us The Human Stain, a particularly repulsive version of Oscar bait. Based on the Philip Roth novel, it's a story of an aging classics professor with a dark secret. Anthony Hopkins stars as Prof. Coleman Silk, who is forced to retire from a New England college for making politically incorrect remarks. His wife dies from the stress of the scandal, and Silk gets ready to settle into an unhappy old age. But he meets Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), an author struggling with writer's block, and Faunia Farely (Nicole Kidman), a beautiful woman struggling with a dark secret of her own. Between late-night conversations with Nathan and late-night rendezvous with Faunia, Coleman Silk finds that life might still be worth living. That is, until his own and Faunia's pasts catch up with them. There are many, many things wrong with The Human Stain. Though Robert Benton is a fine director (Nobody's Fool), here he's given in to his worst Oscar impulses. I knew we were in trouble from the opening sequence, a helicopter shot over a snowy New England pond. How many times have we seen that same opening in other Oscar films? The movie also moves at a glacial pace, lingering over Jean Yves Escoffier's admittedly beautiful lighting and Nicole Kidman's admittedly beautiful body. The gratuitous nudity on display, from both Kidman and newcomer Jacinda Barrett, should make feminists everywhere red with anger. Despite having a tremendous supporting cast, the movie largely wastes the talents of Sinise, Ed Harris, and Kerry Washington. Instead, we see far too many scenes of Hopkins and Kidman looking meaningfully into each other's eyes. And the score by Rachel Portman, with its swelling strings and mournful brass, is bald manipulation at its worst. The most egregious aspect of The Human Stain, though, is its story. The movie's "surprise" has been widely publicized already, so if you want to go into the movie cold, you should probably stop reading here. You see, Coleman Silk is black and has been passing as white for his entire adult life. This, in itself, is not incredible. We see flashbacks to Silk's teenage and college years as he makes the transition to white society. What's truly impossible to believe is that Anthony Hopkins is this same man. Hopkins is not only white, he's white white, as my friends used to say. And this disconnect infects the entire movie. Saddled with a theme that can't possibly convince its audience, Benton and screenwriter Nicholas Meyer largely jettison the race angle and focus on the love story between Hopkins and Kidman. But I'm sure I'm not the only one who mumbles "Yuck" to that. Do we need yet another love story, complete with bedroom scenes, between a 60-something man and a much younger woman? Only in the fantasy worlds of aging novelists and Hollywood producers, I'd say. Miramax is infamous for its aggressive Oscar campaigns, where they try to convince audiences that its movies are not just worth seeing but worth voting for. I expect The Human Stain will receive a similar marketing push. Don't believe the hype. There's a nasty hook on the end of that bait. J. Robert Parks 11/4/2003
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