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The Human Stain | 
 enlarge | Director: Robert Benton
Actors: Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise, Wentworth Miller
Studio: Miramax
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.99
Buy Used: $2.86
You Save: $17.13 (86%)
New (52) Used (48) from $2.86
Rating:  89 reviews
Sales Rank: 20110
Format: Ac-3, Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 106 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: DISD34822D
UPC: 786936238570
EAN: 0786936238570
ASIN: B0001XAPX8
Theatrical Release Date: 2003
Release Date: July 20, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Movie disc only! We liquidate dvds from a large national rentailer. Movie disc works fine and we'll ship it in a protective sleeve for you. There is a 15% chance that it may contain a rental sticker on the disc that we were unable to remove. In stock and ships today.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Given the formidable challenge of adapting Philip Roth's acclaimed novel to the screen, it's a wonder that The Human Stain retains so much of what makes Roth's novel a masterpiece. As adapted by Nicholas Meyer, Robert Benton's film is inevitably a different animal altogether, and it's wide open to charges of miscasting and thematic diffusion. But at its core, this delicate drama succeeds in exposing the sins that stain all of humanity, forcing men like former welterweight boxer and esteemed professor Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins) to forsake family and career to conceal his African American heritage. Light-skinned and passing as a Jewish professor of classics in a tony East Coast college, 71-year-old Silk sinks into scandal when an innocent remark is misinterpreted as a racist slur, and this--along with his affair with an illiterate 34-year-old janitor (Nicole Kidman), and friendship with a reclusive novelist (Gary Sinise)--forms the crux of Benton's multilayered inquiry into the oppressive aftershocks of guilt, shame, and mourning, and the effects of judgment (internal and external) on our ability to connect. Roth's novel was one thing, Benton's film is another. Despite differing degrees of success, both are worthy of praise. --Jeff Shannon
Product Description
After an off-hand remark during a lecture coleman a college professor finds his career in ruin & his character questioned. In his darkest hours he begins an affair with faunia a pretty but troubled young woman. Although the relationship awakens his soul it also begins to unravel a dark secret from his past. Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 05/03/2005 Starring: Nicole Kidman Ed Harris Run time: 106 minutes Rating: R
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| Customer Reviews: Read 84 more reviews...
 Human stain... August 23, 2008
Michelle Polk (Mississippi, USA)
Very thought provoking.
It is about a man leaving his family (and color) to start a new life. For some reason he only falls for white women. Supposedly, he is so light that no one else can tell he is black. He only sneaks around to see his family.It is a strange movie but still thought provoking and deep.
 Disconnected June 25, 2008
Andrea Hawkins (Delaware, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have not read the book, but I will assume for now that it is much more balanced than the film. Overall, it was interesting but not as good as it probably could have been. Though I really enjoyed the flashbacks and think that Wentworth Miller is a great actor, the scenes didn't seem to have any connection to the scenes set in 1998. They were randomly placed, for the most part, so I felt like I was watching two different movies. Though I love Anthony Hopkins, I do agree that he should not have been cast as Coleman. He's just not believable as a black man passing for Jewish, and to top that, he and Wentworth are absolutely nothing alike. Some books aren't made to be adapted into films, and I'd have to say that this one falls under that category.
 Phenomenal January 23, 2008
Susan La Pittus (Huntington Beach CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A very underated movie - this should be a classic of all time. Bought it for our inter-racially married daughter. Hope my "squidlings" will watch it when they are older and understand how far we have come.
 No, No, No! December 12, 2007
Scorpio69 (Hawaii, America's Paradise)
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
***SPOILER ALERT!***
Anthony Hopkins, with his distinctive Welsh accent, plays a black man(!) posing as a Jew (huh?). I guess he developed that Welsh accent as he got older, because it was totally missing in his younger years. Then there's the exquisitely beautiful Nicole Kidman, who does her best to look plain and bedraggled. Both premises are essential to buying into the movie. Both premises are also utterly unbelieveable. Hopkins and Kidman are superb actors, but I could not suspend my disbelief. There is simply NO WAY to believe that Hopkins is even the lightest-skinned black person ever to walk the earth; nor can Kidman hide her radiant beauty behind a frumpy look. No, no, no!
An odd way to tell a story about racial prejudice... November 11, 2007
Neil F. Doyle (USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
THE HUMAN STAIN, from a novel by Philip Roth, is a handsomely produced independent film that strives hard to be a serious study of the effect racial prejudice has on an educated college professor (Anthony Hopkins) who retires when he is accused of using the word "spooks" to cover two of his students who have never showed up for class. In the course of the story, we learn that he himself is a black man passing for white and dealing with a secret he's kept in the dark for most of his life. It has an odd way of telling the story with frequent intervening and overlapping flashbacks that are sometimes hard to follow. Even odder is the casting of Anthony Hopkins as a black man who looks white.
When he meets Nicole Kidman, we have two lost souls. She's running from her past, blaming herself for the accidental death of two children and running from a crazed ex-husband (Ed Harris) who threatens to break up her improbable relationship with the college professor. Kidman tackles a role beyond her scope as a trailer trash type who makes her living as a custodian cleaning up other people's messes. She is never convincing and makes the unappealing character both annoying and absurd, and has absolutely no chemistry with Hopkins. That he would be so attracted to her is highly improbable, given her sudden outbursts of insults and deep rooted anger.
Ed Harris and Gary Sinise do well in underdeveloped roles and both have some very valid moments where they seem like real people instead of contrived characters. Too bad they don't play a greater part in the story.
Production-wise, it's handsomely photographed in rugged winter settings but "the message" fails to get its points across with any subtlety. Wentworth Miller is appealing as the younger Hopkins, but it's hard to accept that the handsome dark-haired youth could turn into a man resembling the older Hopkins--and he's a bit of odd casting too.
Kidman is forced to recite lines like: "Action is the enemy of thought," which is about as meaningless as the priceless "love means never having to say you're sorry" (from LOVE STORY). She's a girl with no possessions who travels light, falls in love easily with an older man and later informs him that she has a crazed ex-husband. Both she and Hopkins have constructed their lives around a lie and it seems they deserve each other. Neither one becomes a sympathetic character we can really care about.
An interesting failure, it tries to say serious things about race but too much of it is unbelievable and handicapped by unpleasant characterizations and implausible plot contrivances.
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