the human stain spoiler

From award winning author Philip Roth, The Human Stain is a statement on twentieth-century morality that could not have been voiced as well by any other writer. ''The Human Stain,'' directed by Robert Benton from a screenplay by Nicholas Meyer, is an honorable B+ term paper of a movie: sober, scrupulous and earnestly respectful of its literary source. There are heartbreaking scenes involving his mother (Anna Deavere Smith), whom he treats with cool disregard. What makes "The Human Stain" ambitious and fascinating is how it considers both of these journeys. The opening scene shows a car driven off the icy road. Plot Keywords After his resignation, unexpectedly, in middle age, he begins a passionate affair with Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman), an unlettered school janitor half his age. The story involves two different kinds of passing: crossing the race line, and the class line. This is the story of Coleman Silk (Sir Anthony Hopkins), a classics professor with a terrible secret that is about to shatter his life in a small New England town. THE HUMAN STAIN exposes the stress that… race and ethnicity, economics, puritanism and paranoia…have placed on the American Dream. | For Language and Sexuality/ Nudity, The Story of Who We Are: Gregory Nava Helps Celebrate Selena’s 50th Birthday, Thumbnails Special Edition: Gregory Nava's Selena, The Brilliance is in the Details of HBO’s Riveting Mare of Easttown. Synopsis Rather than defend himself, he resigns in a rage. Many black family trees have branches that drifted over the color line. Here are complex, troubled, flawed people, brave enough to breathe deeply and take one more risk with their lives. Parents Guide, All Nicole Kidman movies I've watched so far :). The film stars Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Gary Sinise and Ed Harris. he asks his students. Multiple strains of ideas run concurrently and are intertwined. When his affair with young troubled janitor Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman) is uncovered, the secret Silk had harbored for over fifty years from his wife, his children, and colleague, writer Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), fast explodes in a conflagration of … Questions on 'The Human Stain' movie. Coleman and Faunia have been cruelly devalued by life, and find in each other a spark of identification that can cross any barrier. fascism; what's harder to believe is the self-abasing apology delivered late in the movie by one of Silk's tormentors.) "What are they, spooks?" I wish the movie had told us more about how he handled his new Jewish identity (by claiming to be completely secularized, I imagine). The Human Stain Philip Roth (Vintage, £6.99) Buy it at a discount at BOL. Note: "The Human Stain" contains a significant secret about one of the characters. Coleman Silk was a classics professor at small but prestigious Athena College before an accusation of racial discrimination brought his career to … That's because the secret belongs to the character, not the movie. The world thinks Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins) is Jewish. Hopkins makes our acceptance easier because he is a fine actor, and involves us so directly in the character's life that we forget about the technical details. It is narrated by 65-year-old author Nathan Zuckerman, who appears in several earlier Roth novels, and who also figures in both American Pastoral (1997) and I Married a Communist (1998), two books that form a loose trilogy with The Human Stain. This is the story of Coleman Silk (Sir Anthony Hopkins), a classics professor with a terrible secret that is about to shatter his life in a small New England town. The Human Stain is a novel of sweeping ambition that tells the stories not just of individual lives but of the moral ethos of America at the end of the twentieth century. In this play, it has been many years since Oedipus committed the crimes of unwittingly killing his father and marrying his mother. The Human Stain is a film about an elderly retired middle-class university professor called Coleman (played by Anthony Hopkins) who begins a relationship with a troubled woman (played by Nicole Kidman) who leads a white-trash existence, and the effects it has on both of them. Aug 10, 2014 #1. It was heavily criticized for the bizarre casting choice of Anthony Hopkins, which if you know the spoiler for that character, demolishes suspension of disbelief. The opening scene shows a car driven off the icy road. A Human Stain by Kelly Robson is a disturbing horror novelette about a British expatriate at loose ends who is hired by her friend to temporarily care for his young, orphaned nephew in a remote castle-like structure in Germany. Eventually there is Faunia, but his talks with her are more confessional; with Zuckerman, he expresses his rage at the P.C. One day he notes that two students have not attended class. Once he decides to pass, Coleman Silk finds it relatively easy to exist as a white Navy officer, college student and professor; he must have had problems, but we don't see them. The film opened to mixed reviews and was a box office bomb grossing $24.9 million against its $30 million budget. In flashbacks, we see a bright young man, light-skinned enough to pass, who sees two career paths ahead of him, one as a white, the other as a black. Whether Kidman convinces us she is a working-class woman with a wife-beating ex-husband (Ed Harris) is another hurdle the movie sets for itself. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all of his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life became unravelled. [spoilers] Discussion in 'Movie Alley' started by Sashasash, Aug 10, 2014. The Human Stain opened with $1,034,195 with a $6,463 per screen average for its first frame. It is one he has lived with all of his adult life. | Passing for white is not as uncommon as some of the reviewers of "The Human Stain" seem to think. Passing for white is not as uncommon as some of the reviewers of "The Human Stain" seem to think. | To cross the race line involves deep psychological anguish, as you betray yourself and your past, but in the routine of daily existence it is perhaps easier than crossing the class line. The Human Stain (2000) is a novel by Philip Roth, published May 5, 2000. When his affair with young troubled janitor Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman) is uncovered, the secret Silk had harbored for over fifty years from his wife, his children, and colleague, writer Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), fast explodes in a conflagration of devastating consequences. Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins) is a professor who has revitalized Athena, a small New England college. The Human Stain: 2003: 106: R: Ending: Coleman Silk is the head of the literature department at a New England college. How can you answer that question about a man who successfully passes for white? "There's no way we can contain the secret, and we're not even trying to," the film's producer, Tom Rosenberg, told me at the Toronto Film Festival. A light-skinned negro decides to "pass" as white and to do so successfully, he separates himself from his family. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. And there's the lifeboat factor; since they're both under extreme pressure, they're not looking for a "match," but need bailing out -- they respond to each other as rescuers. He quits after being accused of uttering a racial slur ("spooks"), and as soon as she tells his wife, she dies of an aneurysm. Taglines "THE HUMAN STAIN" (2003) (Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman) (R) Alcohol/ Drugs Blood/Gore Disrespectful/ Bad Attitude Frightening/ Tense Scenes Guns/ Weapons; Minor Minor Extreme Mild None Imitative Behavior Jump Scenes Music (Scary/Tense) Music (Inappropriate) Profanity; Mild None Minor None Extreme Sex/ Nudity Smoking Tense Family "It's out there already with the Philip Roth novel. Which is more difficult? Coleman Silk is a professor of classics at a university whose stature he has enhanced. (It's tempting to say the response to his slip is exaggerated, but every campus has a story or two about P.C. Most movie characters are like Greek gods and comic book heroes: We learn their roles and powers at the beginning of the story, and they never change. "The Human Stain" has been directed by Robert Benton with a sure feel for the human values involved. WARNING: Spoilers. (I am not forgetting that to cross from white to black would be much more difficult, because you'd take on the impact of racism.) Observing Silk's estranged son Mark in ‘wild … lamentation’, Nathan is less than generous in imagining what might be going on in the young man's head. Harris is frighteningly effective as the ex-husband; hard to believe this is the same man who plays the kind football coach in "Radio." It was different 50 or 100 years ago, but today most of us find it more difficult to deal in depth with someone of another class than with someone of another race. In The Human Stain, the narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, attends the funeral of a newish friend, Coleman Silk, a professor of Greek at a small Massachusetts college called Athena. The Human Stain Phillip Roth Summary It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a … Consider that Coleman and Faunia must deal with each other despite their lack of common references, education, background, assumptions, manners of speech, tastes and instincts. When a disgraced former college dean has a romance with a mysterious younger woman haunted by her dark, twisted past, he is forced to confront a shocking fact about his own life that he has kept secret for fifty years. Seems Silk ain’t a Jewish name, nor is it French, yet the color of the synonymous pie could be described as white chocolate. The racist white man on the train who berates the porter is played by Allison Davis, a Chicago attorney who is black.) This review discusses it. The Human Stain ( 2003) The Human Stain. The Human Stain is a perfect example of a sprawling novel awkwardly condensed into a 106-minute film. The Human Stain is a work of great thematic and philosophic complexity. The Human Stain digs deep into racism and its attendant politics in the 20th century. The Human Stain is a 2003 drama film directed by Robert Benton. During a class discussion he calls two missing students "spooks". Early in the film, dating a white girl, he takes her home to meet his mother, having not made it clear he is black; his revelation is made through the fact of her appearance, which seems cowardly and cruel. Sashasash Queen … The Human Stain begins with an epigraph from the ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles (496–06 BCE). Because they are African Americans, his wisecrack is interpreted as a racist remark, and he is called before a faculty tribunal. Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman star in The Human Stain, a romantic drama about a man and his demons. One problem with "The Human Stain," however, is that Anthony Hopkins doesn't look anything like Wentworth Miller, who plays him as a young man. The book is set in Western Massachusetts in the late 1990s. Its screenplay, by Nicholas Meyer, is based on the novel of the same name by Philip Roth. Human Stain, The Reviewed By Erik Childress Posted 10/31/03 17:06:59 ... Upcoming spoiler If you don't already know the big secret. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. His family knows otherwise. Hopkins plays a light-skinned African-American professor who has spent his entire life telling people he is Jewish. Multiple strains of ideas run concurrently and are intertwined. They do of course communicate through sex, the universal language, although we may have some doubt about how well Coleman speaks it. Elle "With the help of his alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, Roth continues the inquiry into the state of the American soul during the second half of the twentieth-century. What does the novel reveal about the complexity of issues such as race, sex, identity, and privacy? The Human Stain bears all the scars and stretch marks of a work that has tried to condense the necessarily literary elements of an esteemed novel into a feature film format. Many black family trees have branches that drifted over the color line. He enlists in the Navy as "white", attends college as "white", and marries a white woman as "white". Silk must have someone to confide in, and Zuckerman provides a listener. You can talk and think just the way you do now. NOTE: The following interview contains several spoilers for The Human Stain. And this is crucial: They can communicate through revelation, confession and empathy. When a disgraced former college dean has a romance with a mysterious younger woman haunted by her dark, twisted past, he is forced to confront a shocking fact about his own life that he has kept secret for fifty years. I think she clears it. How would that ethos be described? Once the award heat evaporated, the film proved to be a hard sell. His rage is fueled by his secret: He is an African American himself. Transitions are sudden between scenes, encounters are … (Does Hopkins look as if he "could" have been black? extremism that cost him his job because of an innocent verbal slip, and asks him to write about it. One problem with "The Human Stain," however, is that Anthony Hopkins doesn't look anything like Wentworth Miller, who plays him as a young man. The Human Stain by Philip Roth Reviewed by Ted Gioia Nathan Zuckerman figured as a recurring character in Philip Roth’s fiction for more than a quarter century before the publication of The Human Stain. Roth's extraordinary recent productivity (the prizewinning Sabbath's Theater, 1995, and American Pastoral, 1997) continues apace with this impressively replete and very moving chronicle of an academic scandal and its impact on both the aging professor at its center and his friend—alter ego novelist Nathan Zuckerman. He decides the choice is clear, enlists in the Navy as a white man, and severs his links with his past. The movie's narrator is Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), a recurring character in Roth's later novels. He is accused of making a racist epithet, and quits. The Human Stain (2003) Plot Synopsis. As is true of every other Roth novel that I have read, the issue of identity and its shifting permutations dominate the narrative. Rated R And this isn't a movie like 'The Crying Game,' which is really about its secret." By any reasonable measure, this stand-in for the author –-Zuckerman is a novelist who frequently reminds of us of Mr. Roth -- would have It expanded to 187 theaters the following weekend with diminishing returns at $762,379 and … One day, his carefully constructed life threatens to unravel due to an incident with his students. The Human Stain explicitly recollects his first appearance in a Roth novel. Anyone who works a 12-step program knows how strangers from different backgrounds become friends because they identify with similar experiences. Not many movies probe into matters of identity or adaptation. We simply have to accept the mismatch as a given, and move on. But when he becomes the lover of a night-shift janitor who is younger and semi-literate, who has an ex-husband from the world of "Deliverance," who looks to strangers as if she is too pretty and tall for this balding 60ish guy, he has his work cut out for him. Yes, we have to suspend disbelief over the casting, but that's easier since we can believe the stories of these people. Zuckerman acts largely as an observer as the complex story of the protagonist, Coleman Silk, a retired professor of classics, is slo… A given, and asks him to write about it father and marrying his mother many... His mother issues such as race, sex, identity, and in... Ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles ( 496–06 BCE ) of! Anyone who works a 12-step program knows how strangers from different backgrounds become friends because they are African,... Weekend with diminishing returns at $ 762,379 and … Questions on 'The Human Stain '' ambitious and fascinating is it! 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