“The Human Stain”--the name gives it away. And it’s very sternly, earnestly done, I mean, everyone holds their mouth right. Everyone has perfect diction. The sets are beautiful. The cinematography is top notch—everyone has perfect skin or maybe it just looks that way. But no one feels real here, no matter how much emoting Hopkins and Kidman muster.

Robert Benton’s “The Human Stain” is an elegant film that loses its sense of humor after the opening scene. It becomes more and more grim and unlikable as it progresses.

The film opens with a few upper middle class men taking a stroll across a college campus discussing the Clinton/Monica Lewensky scandal. Their word choice is exact and brutal and strangely out place in this film especially since they do not appear again in the movie. We know that this is meant to introduce the pall of scandal but it’s foreign and oddly detached.

Coleman Silk (Sir Anthony Hopkins) is a college professor once the college’s progressive dean who one day uses a word to describe two students who have never chosen to attend his class. The word is “spook” and the students, unbeknownst to Silk, are black. The college decides to call Silk on the utterance and get him to retract his statement or something (the film is vague as to what they expect of Silk). Of course, Silk is way too proud to admit that he may have used a dangerous term, rather, he quits in protest. The other members of the faculty do not rise to his aid.

Thus, starts a chain of events which includes the death of his wife and the entanglement of Silk, the classics professor, with Faunia (Nicole Kidman) the janitor, a mysterious and promiscuous younger women with a crazy ex-husband (or current husband) in tow. There is a movie in a movie dealing with Silk’s youth that is better than the lurid love triangle that involves Hopkins’ Silk but the film chooses to devote more time to its marquee stars. This is a real pity because how Silk made it to his position in society is the real story here, it’s the one I cared about.

I’ve always been a fan of Sir Anthony Hopkins. He is never bad even when the material betrays him (“Instinct,” for example was way beneath his talents but he made it watchable). Here Hopkins is absolutely perfect for the role of the prancing peacock with a secret past. The problem is that the film refuses to expose his Silk for the monster that he really is, rather, uses a weak epilogue to reveal the secret.

Silk is the epitome of the selfish American. In one scene he tells his friend, Nathan (Gary Sinise) a struggling writer and the film’s narrator, that Viagra has given him a new life. Yet, at no time does it appear that Silk has any sexual dysfunction with Kidman. Even more strange is the thought that Silk would be carrying around Viagra in order to put it to good use should the need arise (I know this is an extreme view but it just was weird in this movie). Truthfully, I found the whole Viagra comment the most interesting thing about Silk in the near present time. You see, he is a character that is so mean-spirited and arrogant that he alienates himself from the other characters in the movie and made me squirm in the audience.

And Kidman’s character is written way too forgivingly to be believed. She is some kind of superwoman here. Smart and sexy and yet damaged, but it isn’t her fault, after all, she is married to a crazy Viet Nam Veteran played by the almost always perfect Ed Harris. The problem is that she doesn’t look the part. For one thing, she is too youthful. One doesn’t believe that she could be Harris’ wife let alone get involved with Silk. Second, she speaks with such perfect diction we wonder what finishing school she attended prior to acquiring her PHD in janitorial work.

Of course, this is a beautiful film to look at. And the scenes involving the young Coleman Silk are really excellent. The young Silk is played by Wentworth Miller who I have had the pleasure of speaking with and whose own background make him perfect for the role. Miller gets the best scenes in the movie including a tender awkward kiss and a sexy strip tease seduction with the gorgeous Nordic appearing Jacinda Barrett who plays Steena Silk’s college love.

But for all that is good about this film I expected it to be more satisfying. I was left a little hollow which may have been the intent. With talent this good across the board both in front of the camera and behind it, audiences should be rewarded not depressed and left wanting. Eastwood’s “Mystic River” out now in theaters is easily more morose than “Stain” but manages to be more entertaining and thought-provoking (its concluding scenes made me think that even a sequel could be possible). Perhaps, this is the best that could have been done with the material. Next time I see Hopkins on the screen, I sure hope that he has something more interesting to seriously pontificate about other than the joys of Viagra.

Jonathan W. Hickman, 2003