The Human Stain
The Human Stain (2003) is loaded with brilliant talent but is disliked by most reviewers (it gets a dismal 41% fresh tomatoes when the cut-off for a watchable movie is 60-65%). I really liked it. So let’s start sorting things out. A major criticism—which, not incidentally, shows how erudite film critics are—is that the movie is not nearly as good as the Philip Roth novel. So we should set to one side all those people who have read the book. I haven’t and never will—and this goes for the vast majority of people in North America. If you have, don’t see the movie—even though some astute film critics such as Andrew Sarris say that it does the novel justice.
If you haven’t read Philip Roth’s great novel, will you like the movie? Your chances of liking the movie are good if you can identify with the following:
Tragedy—The old classics professor (Anthony Hopkins) initially seems to have lived a cushy life, but as the flashbacks accumulate, we see the hardship and struggle that he has gone through in forging his life. The last love of his life is a badly damaged 34-year old abuse survivor (Nicole Kidman). When my life was nothing but a string of successes, I would have found this movie remote, but now that I’ve lived a bit more, I can identify.
Victim of political correctness—At the start of the movie, the professor is drummed out of his job because he said of two students who had never been to class, “Do they exist or are they spooks?” By chance, they turned out to be black, one claimed to be devastated by the supposed racial slur, and no colleague would come to the professor’s defence. If you have not worked in such an environment, this will seem absurd, and then the tragic event which sparks the last phase of the old guy’s life will seem ridiculous instead of infuriating and unfair. I have worked in such an environment and have seen such things happen.
Old—While most Hollywood movies aim for the younger demographic, this movie features an old man—career gone, wife killed, ostracized. When I was eighteen, I could not imagine what it might be like to be 30. “Don’t trust anyone over 30” is an old hippy mantra which suggests to me that other people might have the same difficulty. You have to have some connection with old age—personal or vicarious—to appreciate what the old man is going through.
Abuse—The Nicole Kidman character, Faunia, is so screwed up, that it takes a lot of empathy to watch her, to stay with her, through the movie. To prepare for the role, Kidman visited with women in women’s shelters. The movie is not asking you to excuse Faunia’s behaviour but to understand it. If you can’t, she will only grate on your nerves.
Finally, this movie will really get your goat if you are uptight and obsessed about black/white race relations. First, supposedly oppressed black students wrongly destroy a good man’s career and his black friend refuses to speak in his defence. Second, through flashbacks we see that the old man is actually a light-skinned black who forsook his family and pretended to be a white Jew in order to make his way in the world, in order to be “himself” rather than “a Negro.” Third, the old guy is played by Anthony Hopkins who is white, Welsh, blue-eyed, and suntanned. Although he captures the character’s conflict and drive and sophistication and empathy perfectly, the consensus among critics is that as a white he is miscast. If you have major “issues” with any of these racial elements—which I don’t—you’ll find yourself fighting this movie.
Ironically, when one of the major complaints about The Human Stain is that it does not capture the complexity of Roth’s great novel, the greatest weakness of the movie is most likely that it demands too much from the viewer.