The Human Stain

THE HUMAN STAIN: A REVIEW

Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins stars this dramatic thriller based on a novel by Philip Roth. He plays the role of a prestigious classics professor who is dismissed from the university where he works on the grounds of an accusation of racism.

The film starts with a car accident where the two main characters, Nathony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, the professor’s lover, apparently die. In fact, this is the end of the story.The film then moves back in time to the professor’s dismissal and his wife’s death. After that we are introduced to the two other leading characters played by Gary Sinise, once a successful writer who is now living in a cabin by a lake and by Nicole Kidman, a woman with a dark past who becomes the professor’s lover.

The story has an unexpected twist when by means of flashbacks into the professor’s past we discover a secret he has hidden for years. Besides, this gripping thriller reveals the mystery in the professor’s lover’s previous life, a tragic story of lost children and an abusive husband.

With The Human Stain, Robert Benton, the director, concocts an intelligent and dramatic thriller that intertwines the themes of racism, remorse, women’s battering etc. in a story with a tragic ending. You should definitely see it if only for its superb acting and engaging plot... And perhaps for the two questions that have been left unanswered: was the accident deliberate? And what is the professor’s secret?