The Human Stain Details

With this stately adaptation, Kramer vs Kramer director Robert Benton struggles to retain the shocking power of author Philip Roth's angry meditation on race, class, sex and political correctness. This is mainly because Roth's blistering denunciation of hypocrisy hinges on a literary trick that doesn't carry the same visceral punch when adapted to the medium of cinema. Anthony Hopkins plays Coleman Silk, a university professor driven from his job after supposedly making a racial slur. Silk then enlists the help of a local author (Gary Sinise) to tell his story and begins a Viagra-fuelled affair with white trash janitor Faunia Farely (Nicole Kidman). His tragic past is gradually revealed in flashbacks, with Wentworth Miller as the younger Silk desperate to hide the true nature of his lineage. Despite the intriguing material, Benton's probing of America's collective consciousness never convinces — Hopkins and Kidman are miscast, Sinise and Ed Harris (as Faunia's abusive ex-husband) are clichéd and the opening flash-forward dissipates any suspense in the eventual outcome. Worth a look, maybe, but not a close one.

Ponderous drama of guilt and recrimination that gets equally ponderous performances from its two leads; there's no imaginative life in the movie.