I honestly never expected to find myself complaining that a movie
starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman would be sunk by its
terrible casting, but that is exactly what happens to The Human Stain,
an adaptation of the celebrated novel by Philip Roth. Robert Benton, a
filmmaker who once knew how to put together a quality movie but has
been coasting on his reputation for the past couple of decades,
directs and largely misses the point of the book.
Hopkins stars
as Coleman Silk, professor of literature and classics at a snooty
college in New England. He is a man obsessed with the precision of
words who, ironically, becomes embroiled in controversy over the use
of a single word: "Spooks." Taken out of context, his
description of two mysteriously vanished students is decried as a
racial epithet. This leads to the loss of his position and, due to
related stress, the death of his wife. Kidman later enters his life as
an unlikely romantic interest who brings a whole new set of problems
with her. The two leads are obviously both fine actors with
plenty of major award wins and nominations to their credit.
Nonetheless, they are both woefully, almost absurdly miscast here.
Kidman is simply way too glamorous to play the white trash farmhand
Faunia (in the novel she's even illiterate). I would have to reveal a
gigantic plot twist to explain why Hopkins doesn't belong in his role;
suffice it to say that although he at first seems right at home
playing an uptight college professor, when we learn more about Silk's
backstory it becomes patently ridiculous for Hopkins to possibly be
that character.
Set against the backdrop of the
Clinton/Lewinsky scandal in 1998, Roth's novel was a biting satire of
political correctness gone amok. The screenplay by Nicholas Meyer
basically eviscerates that entire aspect of the story, using it only
as the set-up and focusing entirely on the Hopkins/Kidman relationship
instead. Even here he guts out important character details like
Faunia's illiteracy, which served as ironic counterpoint to Coleman's
obsession with language. You'd think something like that might be
important, but I suspect that the producers and studio demanded that
her character be softened up for the audience. I generally don't
complain when movies deviate from their source novels, because the two
media really ought to be judged separately, but in a case like this it
seems like everyone involved had no idea what the book was even
about. 
Despite their obvious inappropriateness, Hopkins and
Kidman both do the best with what they've got and deliver fine, mostly
appealing performances. Gary Sinise and Ed Harris also do decent work
in supporting roles (though Sinise is much too young for his part),
and the actor playing the young Coleman is quite good even though he
shares no physical resemblance to Hopkins whatsoever. The film is well
put together and, considering how much it alters from the book,
competently-scripted for what it is, but just has no juice. It tries
to plumb some emotional depths with serious issues like denying one's
own identity, but doesn't go anywhere that better movies haven't
already been. The picture didn't attract much attention at the box
office, probably because a title like The Human Stain doesn't exactly
appeal to the moviegoing instinct. Even with all the talent involved,
I don't foresee it doing much better on home video.
Video:
How Does The Disc Look?
Contrary to what it says on the
disc case, the DVD preserves the movie's theatrical aspect ratio of
2.35:1 with anamorphic enhancement. The picture has good colors and
contrasts, with nice black level and plenty of visible shadow detail.
Unfortunately, it also has a lot of edge enhancement ringing and
sometimes poor digital compression quality. Close-up shots exhibit a
nice sense of textural detail, but medium and wide shots don't fare as
well and often look indistinct. Overall, Miramax's transfer is
thoroughly mediocre.
Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is also unexceptional. Volume is
set very low by default, and when amplified won't exactly bowl anyone
over with its dynamic range. The movie is almost all dialogue, which
is often hard to make out without cranking the volume. There is a
moderate amount of depth to the musical score and the occasional sound
effect (Ed Harris's truck engine gets a good revving), but has no
discernable usage of the surround or LFE channels. It's a restrained
sound mix for a restrained movie.
A French dub is also provided
in Dolby Digital 5.1. The disc offers optional subtitles in English
for the Hearing Impaired, French, or Spanish, as well as English
closed captioning.
Supplements: What Goodies Are There?
The forced trailer before the menu and other sneak
peaks for unrelated crap shouldn't really count as "bonus
features," but when a disc is as feature-starved as this one you
have to make mention of everything.
Miramax didn't go out of their
way to do anything special for the movie. The Behind the
Scenes Special is 7 minutes of Electronic Press Kit fluff
that tells you nothing new or exciting about making the movie. After
this is the Tribute to Jean-Yves Escoffier, a 2-
minute compilation of unidentified clips from the late
cinematographer's work. The tribute conveniently only covers those
titles he worked on for Miramax, which (Good Will Hunting perhaps
excepted) were not exactly the highlights of his career. Something
makes me think he may have even left The Crow: City of Angels off his
resume.
DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the
disc in your PC?
There are no ROM extras on the disc.
Parting Thoughts
A mediocre movie gets a mediocre
DVD. The Human Stain wants to be a better movie than it is, but the
DVD hardly even tries. So-so picture and sound quality and worthless
supplements don't add to the appeal. Save this one for a rental rather
than purchase, or just wait for it on cable.
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