Though Oscar-winner Robert Benton has not successfully distilled the vitriolic humour, absurdity and tension in Philip Roth's highly regarded novel, The Human Stain, he has still made a film that offers many benefits.

The slow moving film could have been more startling, urgent and sparkling in a few key sequences, but it can still be admired for many sharply delivered performances, especially Nicole Kidman's. In minor but key parts, Anna Deavere Smith and Harry Lennix as the black parents are stirring.

There are several chilling scenes in the film, including a heart-piercing encounter between the black mother (Smith) and her son (Wentworth Miller), who has made a huge and unusual choice.

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Watch for the family meal scene dominated by a stern and well-bearing father (Lennix), and what comes soon after that powerful encounter. There is also a poignant, suspenseful scene in which a magnifcent Kidman pours out her heart to a caged bird. A lesser actress could have turned the scene silly, but Kidman is in top form here, as she is throughout the film.

There is plenty to discuss later about racism, race relations, political correctness in the academic world -- and not in the least the casting of Anthony Hopkins.

Coleman Silk (Hopkins), a classics professor who is Jewish,  uses the word 'spooks' in the class for two students who have not turned up for classes at all. Soon, he learns the students are blacks and they perceive the word as a racial slur. He tries to explain his innocence but cannot convince his colleagues.

Angry at what he sees as political correctnesses gone to the extreme when none of his colleagues back him up, he quits the job in a hurry. A few days later, he loses his wife to a brain disease. Months later, when he begins a relationship with Faunia (Nicole Kidman), a much younger woman who is forced to give up her privileged life and now works as a college janitor, we begin to slowly see his past, too.

Since this is not a mystery movie, and since The Human Stain has been a steadily selling book for over ten years, we can reveal that Silk was born in a black family. He decided to assume the Jewish identity at the suggestion of his college coach when he decided to go to elite schools for his higher education.

Here lies one of the major problems in the movie. Though scientifically, the possibility of a white-looking child being born in a black family is a distinct possibility, somehow we find it difficult to believe that Hopkins (or, for that matter Wentworth Miller, who plays the younger Hopkins) is that grown up child.

Worse, Miller does not look anything like what Hopkins might have looked in his younger years.

Though Hopkins gives a strong performance as a man with too many problems on his shoulders, it is still difficult to be convinced that he is indeed a black person.

Silk reveals his secret only to Faunia who is never tired of talking about the ghosts in her life, including her ex-husband (Ed Harris), who is obsessed with her. He even blames her for the death of their two children.

Even Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), the reclusive writer, who becomes a friend of Silk after the latter visits him and urges him to write his story, comes to know the secret only after Silk's death.   

The film's doomed love affair resonates best when Coleman tells Zuckerman of his passion for Faunia.

"Granted she's not my first love. Granted she's not my great love," he says even as his voice trembles a bit. "But she sure as hell is my last love."

The words echo with chill when Silk and Faunia are killed in what at first looks like a road accident. Some of the film's more heartfelt scenes unreel after the funeral.

Once again, we are forced to revisit the duality of human nature, the cost of lifelong lies, and the calamitous problems unleashed by racism, insensitivity and falsehood.

CREDITS
Cast: Anthony Hopkins,  Nicole Kidman, Gary Sinise, Wentworth Miller, Ed Harris, Jacinda Barrett, Anna Deavere Smith and Harry Lennix
Director: Robert Benton
Writer: Nicholas Meyer,  based on a novel of the same name by Philip Roth
Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Rating: R for language and sexuality/nudity
Distributor: Miramax