HUMAN STAIN, THE
Released: October 31, 2003
The Human Stain is the story of Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins), a classics professor with a terrible secret that is about to shatter his life in a small New England town. When his affair with a young troubled janitor (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. 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 his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled. The shocking secret that Hopkins hides isn't his relationship with the half-his-age Kidman but something quite different. But as a movie that provides a story, this one is different enough compared to the usual studio offerings to make it worth seeing. It's also a smart movie, which is a rarity. There are scenes where you'd expect the Ed Harris character to gouge Gary Sinese with an ice fishing hole driller but they don't happen. It's not a slasher flick; it's smarter than that and I respect the film makers for making a smart film for audiences tired of the usual box office fare...
106 Minutes
Lakeshore Entertainment/Miramax