Ray Pride

Set on a New England campus, mostly in chilly winter, "The Human Stain" is an adaptation of Philip Roth's intense novel about the later years of an academic accused of being un-PC (Anthony Hopkins) who has, in fact, been a black man passing for white for decades.

His memories of his youthful revisionism surface when he starts a relationship with an abused younger woman (Nicole Kidman); they strike sparks that warm them, but confound the community. Director Robert Benton's approach is bluntly stated, intensely acted, and dramatically valuable.

Benton told me that the movie wouldn't exist if it weren't for his collaborators, notably Chicago producer Tom Rosenberg and his Lakeshore Entertainment, the late cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier, who died after shooting the film--"I had hoped to make the rest of my movies with him," Benton told me; and screenwriter Nicholas Meyer.

The movie opens with a departure from Roth's book, with several faculty members crossing the campus in tennis whites, discussing the sexual predilections of Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton a few moments before professor Coleman Silk (Hopkins) will be accused of being politically incorrect, or perhaps even racist, for referring to a few students who'd never come to class as "spooks." The nonexistent students, a committee is formed to tell Silk, were African American. Silk is outraged for academic reasons, but he never speaks his mind. Immediately, his longtime wife's reaction is tragic: she dies in his arms.

The audience is then privileged to see his memories of having been a talented young man, a boxer and academic, but who could never advance in the worlds he coveted as a black man. Hopkins? Passing? Why not? Why must movie acting be taken so literally? Silk becomes involved with Faunia (Nicole Kidman), a younger woman, who works several demeaning jobs, worrying each day her angry ex-husband (Ed Harris) will return.

The community does not approve of this disgraced, seventyish man consorting with the thirtyish Faunia. Silk befriends Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), a blocked novelist who becomes Silk's friend and confessor.

It is a small canvas. The acting is forceful, the writing blunt. It's a striking portrait of controlled rage: how do we socialize ourselves against our inner fears, longings, loathing, without letting them eat us alive inside? Early reviews from "Human Stain"'s premiere at the Toronto Film Festival were withering, and I was surprised to read them; much of the commentary seemed to center on the movie the writer expected to see, or the adaptation of the Roth text they wanted, rather than the fiercely focused movie on screen, distilled to a few gestures of outrage and loss rather than sprawling across a larger canvas.

I talked to the once-wunderkind screenwriter, 57-year-old Nicholas Meyer ("Fatal Attraction," "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan") at Toronto. Why so few attempts at Roth on screen? "I don't really know. I know that the output itself, while prolific, is also uneven. This, I think, is one of his almost completely successful books. There are some like 'American Pastoral' that are almost home runs. It's a terrific book, then something happens in the last sixty pages, and everything goes all diffuse. The books need problem-solving."

I'd think financiers fear the subject matter as well; the profane opening dialogue added by Meyer suggests even stronger material to come. "But that's what his book is about, I think. How we're so busy being afraid of anything that is construed as politically incorrect, socially incorrect. In an era where we've all been declawed, defanged, y'know, comedians just make safe jokes and nobody wants to stick his head up too high for fear it'll be chopped off."

So then it takes the confidence and experience and age of someone like you, or Rosenberg, or Benton, I ask, to make it happen? He pauses, slouches and slides across the chair. "It's interesting because those very tennis players to whom you allude are in fact scorning this sort of Oprah culture, the yap-yap-yap culture in which confession and closure are all. What is open-ended, what is rude, what is raw, what is incorrect, what is unforgivable, what is human--is banished. We've raised a generation of people--kids, artists--who are cut off from that bolder time when everything was bolder including movies."

Did the directing he did earlier in his career help him as a writer, to simplify, to try to tell the truth? "I became a much better screenwriter once I was also directing. At least for me, there was no other way to learn in a kind of visceral fashion what the proportionate relation between words and pictures were." You became more impatient with the writer in you? "I was much more prodigal with language until I had directed and realized the enormous significance that could be achieved with fewer words. Words in the movies, too many of them, have the opposite effect of what you intend."

"The Human Stain" opens Friday.

(2003-10-29)

Also by Ray Pride

Acting out
The only thing more frightening in prospect than a dysfunctional family Thanksgiving is a comedy about a dysfunctional Thanksgiving
(2003-10-23)

Short Runs
This week's limited screenings
(2003-10-23)

Tip of the Week
Here's the real kill-thrill: the ridiculously prolific Takashi Miike's "Ichi the Killer" tops even his "Audition" for slashingly stylized mayhem.
(2003-10-22)

Tip of the Week
While documentary is one of the great hopes of contemporary storytelling, not enough attention has yet been paid in the U.S. to traditions in other countries
(2003-10-16)

Chemistry project
(2003-10-16)

Precious moments
(2003-10-16)

Short Runs
(2003-10-16)

Tip of the Week
(2003-10-08)

Thrill kill
(2003-10-08)

An imperfect world
(2003-10-08)

Chicago International Film Festival
(2003-10-08)

Short Runs
(2003-10-08)

about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment