Rating: 
Summary: One of the Greatest Dramas on Film
Review: The character development in A Human Stain should be an educational tool for filmakers of the future. This is a masterpiece of a drama with acting beyond compare. Nicole Kidman transforms herself each time she is on screen and makes you forget any character she had inhabited before. Hopkins and Sinese are wonderful. A Human Stain should be seen by all to view what a cinematic drama is supposed to be and the acting is a treasure to watch. The story line is insightful, but I won;t spoil this review by revelaing too much, you must see it, it will stay with you for years to come.
Rating: 
Summary: MORE WEAKNESSES THAN STRENGTHS -- TOO BAD
Review: The movie tries to tell the story of Coleman Silk, originally a poor kid from1930s East Orange who has remade himself into something else -- College Dean Silk [played by Anthony Hopkins], a brilliant classics professor. But then, a chance comment in class -- actually referring to two of his class cutting students as "spooks" (not knowing that they are African-Amrecans) opens Silk up to charges of racism, and his sudden attraction to a cleaning lady [Nicole Kidman] adds an element of class consciousness as well. It's a complicated story, presented with lots of flash backs and flash forwards, made more complicated by a secret the film reveals fairly early on. Because what the people accusing Silk of racism don't know is that he himself is black -- and has been successfully "passing" for white, for more than half-a- century. The movie's scripty wrestles with enormously complicated issues.
THE HUMAN STAIN succeeds, but only partially. Hopkins seems an odd casting choice at first, but he turns out to be ultimately the
right one -- is the stubborn Silk; Nicole Kidman is Faunia, the raw-boned cleaning woman he falls in love with. Robert Benton, of "Kramer vs. Kramer" directs, and novelist and sometime director Nicholas Meyer did the screenplay. One big problem is that how does a very lights sknned black kid born and rasied in New Jersey wind up with an aristocratic British accent? Hmmm? Audiences fascinated with the issues THE HUMAN STAIN touches upon -- class and sex, race and identity -- are better off searching for material that delves into them deeply. This story is not the Great American Novel but it does boldly confront the great American issues. The casting, is partly to blame for this fiasco. The unmixable Hopkins and Kidman probably was supposed to produce a big box-office draw. As the priapic Silk, the usually excellent Hopkins is too stiff, lacking the animal charisma to gulp down Viagra to frolic in bed with Faunia. Talk about lack of chemistry. You can more readily imagine her with Harris' certifiable loony character. And the usually excellent characters delivered by Kidman, in this film simply looks too glamerous to be cleaning toilets and milking cows, especially with her porcelain skin and tousled ringlets. And so, the film overreaches at times, and may not be as powerful as the material deserves. However, THE HUMAN STAIN is not exactly a failure.
Rating: 
Summary: A man's stormy, unhappy life's journey
Review: This film is certainly enjoyable and worthwhile if you can accept the premise that Anthony Hopkins' character has buried his secret for his entire adult life and now confesses all to his spunky, unlettered lover Faunia [Nicole Kidman]. The movie is told in many flashbacks and will be hard to follow for those who don't pay close attention. Professor Silk's problems at his college that lead to his tribunal before the faculty and subsequent resignation are filled with irony but it doesn't seem that it is Hopkins who bears the insecurity, shame and humiliation of being in denial all his life as much as Wentworth Miller does who plays the younger Coleman Silk. The vignettes tell tragic and unhappy stories but reveal the Silk family as proud and dignified and they are represented by a wonderful cast of talented actors. Hopkins and Kidman, as expected, are great as partners in a May-December affair.
Rating:
Summary: The Human Stain
Review: This is an excellent movie that speaks to a problem that we often have as human beings--- an inability to accept who we are and where we came from and the consequences of those decisions and choices that we make as a result.
Rating:
Summary: Must See!!
Review: This movie does a good job of showing the dangers of ignorance & racism. This movie exposes how much havoc such narrow minded folk can cause. For this reason alone, I recommend this movie. I also recommend it because it's a good story and the acting is top notch! Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Leave the "Love Story" out.
Review: This movie started out excellently. I thought they should have shown more of the young Silk with his family. It also seemed that Jacinta Barrett was trying to stay with him until she realized his mother would never approve. They should have shown him trying to decided whether to embrace his blackness and see if he could still keep his job or at least go to court and fight the charges while still remaining undercover. The love story was totally unnecessary to the development of the plot, and the ending seems like they ran out of ideas. I would have liked to see more of Wentworth Miller (his performance is worth watching the movie for) and Anna DeVere Smith. And yes, Anthony Hopkins was truly miscast.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor writing and direction.
Review: Well the script was so full of holes that I stopped counting them and the direction was so bad that I felt like laughing when I should have been crying or feeling angry about what was going on. That's the problem with mainstream movies, so many never quite take off the ground.
Rating:
Summary: It's Stained Alright
Review: What in god's name was Robert Benton thinking? Or Sir Anthony? Or Gary Sinise? Was Ed Harris after the Oscar he was denied last year? This film is a perfect example of a wonderful combination of artists put together & creating a monumental cinematic disaster.. Gary Sinise(narrating here)sounds like he was awakened from a deep sleep, had a microphone shoved in front of him & handed the script to read from. Anthony Hopkins looks like he can't wait for it to be over. I wonder if when he studied acting, he ever thought he'd have to do a scene where he half-heartedly discusses the joys of Viagra. I'm not sure what Nicole Kidman's character was supposed to be...watch her closely..sultry? sexy? femme fatale? I don't think she did either.. This DVD should be free with ANY purchase...Disastrous.....
Rating:
Summary: a double feature
Review: When I was watching the Human Stain, I felt like I was watching two movies. The first was the story of a justifiably bitter man redeemed by an unlikely love affair, who must protect his lover from her unstable ex. The second, and far more compelling, was of a young man in the 1940s who makes a fateful choice that will affect the rest of his life. Anthony Hopkins is excellent, as usual, and it's easy to imagine him having been a boxer in his youth-- he seems to bring a sense of pugnaciousness to most of his roles. Nicole Kidman is another matter. She's simply too glamorous to be believable as this beaten down and (in the novel) illiterate woman.
The other of half of the story is much more interesting and features an outstanding performance by Wentworth Miller as the young Coleman Silk. These scenes crackle with the energy of a young man and a country teetering on the edge of unimaginable upheaval. Anna Deveare Smith is also very good as Coleman's mother. For some reason, I never believed that Miller and Hopkins were the same person, and it seemed ludicrous that Coleman would reach late middle age without revealing his secret. (Couldn't he have done so in the '60s?) ....
Ed Harris is reliably good as Kidman's ex, but again it's hard to imagine his and Kidman's characters being married. A good try.
Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Film That Stands On Its Own Merits
Review: Yes, Phillip Roth's gaudily angry masterwork of a novel has its own particular power, but despite the naysayers, the film adaptation of THE HUMAN STAIN is successful on every level. It retains all of the harsh social commentary so biting in Roth's written words and yet fleshes out the characters in a way that makes the story of an aging small college Dean/teacher's fall from his pedestal of a life all the more credible. Some of the minor characters from the book are gone, true, and the faculty of his college doesn't feel as visually present, but the story's strange impact is very much intact. Coleman Silk (in a stunningly multi-layered performance by Anthony Hopkins) was born a mulatto African American and decided in highschool (his younger self portrayed with sensitivity by Wentworth Miller), while being a champion boxer in order to gain college scholarships, that passing as Caucasian would provide entry into a better life, one not stained by the color of his skin and not confined to subservient roles like those forced on his educated father. He succeeds in passing as white with a few exceptions: he brings his blonde college girlfriend home to meet his mother (a sensitive role for Anna Devere Smith) and finds that his girlfriend cannot accept his roots. He then extracts himself from his family completely, lives as a Jew, and joins the faculty of Athena College - a small, proper school which he forcefully overhauls until he becomes the formidable Dean. A simple statement in a classroom - referring to two unseen students who have never shown for his class as "spooks" (ghosts), not knowing that the missing students were African American - results in his being fired for racism for his epithet. Angry and lost, Silk encounters a woman (Fawnia) who cleans toilets, milks cows, and appears to be nothing more than white trailer park trash, has a physical encounter with her, then finds himself becoming emotionally captive to the creature. Fawnia (one of Nicole Kidman's finest roles to date) keeps to herself, providing only lusty outlets for Silk, but gradually reveals that she is married to a stalking Vietnam Vet gone insane (Ed Harris in another quality cameo role), has two dead children lost in a fire, and indeed came from a wealthy family she elected to leave because of her parent's shallow obsession with possessions. Fawnia lives only for the moment. Silk meets Zuckerman (Gary Sinese), a novelist suffering from writer's block who lives in hiding in a secluded cabin and who intones the thoughts of novelist Roth. He encourages Zuckerman to cure his block by writing a novel about his (Silk's) bizarre life's turn of events. Silk finally tells Fawnia his real secret of passing as white, finds his last love, encourages Fawnia to also shed her life of lies, and the story ends where it begins - with a fatal car crash. The story is set in 1998 and frequently refers to the Clinton/Lewinsky affair and the general stagnation of public morals and bigotry, unveiling all the hypocrisy that stews through every level of our society. The use of this battle of private versus public life is extended in many aspects of this story and always leaves questions as unanswered as they truly remain today. Director Robert Benton has done a masterful job pacing this pungent piece. The acting is extraordinary, especially from Kidman and Hopkins who manage to electrify the screen in animal sexuality, despite all the odds against such an attraction being credible. Watch this film, AND read Roth's book, and your view of our society will be altered inextricably.
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