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Business Stationary Mart - The Human Stain
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List Price: $19.99
Our Price: $3.67
Your Save: $ 16.32 ( 82% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Miramax
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise, Wentworth Miller
Directed By: Robert Benton
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0786936238570
Format: AC-3
Label: Miramax
Manufacturer: Miramax
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Miramax
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2004-07-20
Running Time: 106
Studio: Miramax
Theatrical Release Date: 2003
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Human stain...
Comment: Very thought provoking.
It is about a man leaving his family (and color) to start a new life. For some reason he only falls for white women. Supposedly, he is so light that no one else can tell he is black. He only sneaks around to see his family.It is a strange movie but still thought provoking and deep.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disconnected
Comment: I have not read the book, but I will assume for now that it is much more balanced than the film. Overall, it was interesting but not as good as it probably could have been. Though I really enjoyed the flashbacks and think that Wentworth Miller is a great actor, the scenes didn't seem to have any connection to the scenes set in 1998. They were randomly placed, for the most part, so I felt like I was watching two different movies. Though I love Anthony Hopkins, I do agree that he should not have been cast as Coleman. He's just not believable as a black man passing for Jewish, and to top that, he and Wentworth are absolutely nothing alike. Some books aren't made to be adapted into films, and I'd have to say that this one falls under that category.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Phenomenal
Comment: A very underated movie - this should be a classic of all time. Bought it for our inter-racially married daughter. Hope my "squidlings" will watch it when they are older and understand how far we have come.
Customer Rating:
Summary: No, No, No!
Comment: ***SPOILER ALERT!***
Anthony Hopkins, with his distinctive Welsh accent, plays a black man(!) posing as a Jew (huh?). I guess he developed that Welsh accent as he got older, because it was totally missing in his younger years. Then there's the exquisitely beautiful Nicole Kidman, who does her best to look plain and bedraggled. Both premises are essential to buying into the movie. Both premises are also utterly unbelieveable. Hopkins and Kidman are superb actors, but I could not suspend my disbelief. There is simply NO WAY to believe that Hopkins is even the lightest-skinned black person ever to walk the earth; nor can Kidman hide her radiant beauty behind a frumpy look. No, no, no!
Customer Rating:
Summary: An odd way to tell a story about racial prejudice...
Comment: THE HUMAN STAIN, from a novel by Philip Roth, is a handsomely produced independent film that strives hard to be a serious study of the effect racial prejudice has on an educated college professor (Anthony Hopkins) who retires when he is accused of using the word "spooks" to cover two of his students who have never showed up for class. In the course of the story, we learn that he himself is a black man passing for white and dealing with a secret he's kept in the dark for most of his life. It has an odd way of telling the story with frequent intervening and overlapping flashbacks that are sometimes hard to follow. Even odder is the casting of Anthony Hopkins as a black man who looks white.
When he meets Nicole Kidman, we have two lost souls. She's running from her past, blaming herself for the accidental death of two children and running from a crazed ex-husband (Ed Harris) who threatens to break up her improbable relationship with the college professor. Kidman tackles a role beyond her scope as a trailer trash type who makes her living as a custodian cleaning up other people's messes. She is never convincing and makes the unappealing character both annoying and absurd, and has absolutely no chemistry with Hopkins. That he would be so attracted to her is highly improbable, given her sudden outbursts of insults and deep rooted anger.
Ed Harris and Gary Sinise do well in underdeveloped roles and both have some very valid moments where they seem like real people instead of contrived characters. Too bad they don't play a greater part in the story.
Production-wise, it's handsomely photographed in rugged winter settings but "the message" fails to get its points across with any subtlety. Wentworth Miller is appealing as the younger Hopkins, but it's hard to accept that the handsome dark-haired youth could turn into a man resembling the older Hopkins--and he's a bit of odd casting too.
Kidman is forced to recite lines like: "Action is the enemy of thought," which is about as meaningless as the priceless "love means never having to say you're sorry" (from LOVE STORY). She's a girl with no possessions who travels light, falls in love easily with an older man and later informs him that she has a crazed ex-husband. Both she and Hopkins have constructed their lives around a lie and it seems they deserve each other. Neither one becomes a sympathetic character we can really care about.
An interesting failure, it tries to say serious things about race but too much of it is unbelievable and handicapped by unpleasant characterizations and implausible plot contrivances.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Academy Award(R) winners Anthony Hopkins (1991 Best Actor, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) and Nicole Kidman (2002 Best Actress, THE HOURS) along with Gary Sinise (FORREST GUMP) and Ed Harris (THE HOURS) star in the provocative mystery THE HUMAN STAIN. Coleman Silk (Hopkins) has a secret. A terrible 50-year-old secret that the esteemed college professor has kept hidden from everyone — including his wife, his children, and his down-and-out young lover (Kidman) — and it's about to ruin his entire life.
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