Best movie ever!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The problem with the movie Human Stain is it uses clichés, false suppositions, and more prejudice to paint a confusing story. Anthony Hopkins plays a college professor who loses his career for making racial comments. His lifelong secret is he has black blood since his natural parents are light colored African Americans. The first supposition is he was wronged for being fired for making racial comments. He WAS angry with the black race since they reminded him of his family. Whites and blacks drag over the coals blacks with conservative view points. Any person who hates blacks is more deserving of contempt despite their race. There are good and bad whites and blacks so you don't write off an entire race because you are angry with your family.The second wrong supposition and the racism was that professor was a hot white chick magnet because of his secret black blood. If not for that pint of Black blood he'd be just another middle aged white loser who never gets laid. Otherwise how would he end up in a Philip Roth novel. Roth doesn't care about race. He just had to write another of his steamy books and add race to make him appear to be a more significant writer. The professor diddles with a woman who's sole is destroyed by her past. Half the people in the movie told him not to do it. You are supposed to believe his special love is enough to save her. It's really patronizing of Philip Roth to sink Blacks to the level of his writing pretending he's giving them a complement. They destroy each other for good reason oh but there is a racist. If you are killed by a racist there must be something good about you. There were no skid marks. Is that Roth saying it actually is wrong to have sex with a mentally ill person? Nothing like a Jew using pretend blacks to put down whites.

Well this was...something. A weird yet amazing story that honestly I have no clear idea what it all meant. Antony Hopkins plays Coleman Silk, a college professor who throughout his life, has been a master of deception and self-reinvention. We see him as a promising young college student with his first love Steena and then as an esteemed professor whose career is ruined by false accusations while he also begins a scandalous affair with a younger, mysterious (strange) woman.Nicole Kidman plays Faunia and is utterly transformed here, so well acted and Anthony Hopkins is (as always) very good too. It was interesting to see him in a romantic role, of sorts. I also enjoyed Wentworth Miller (in the same part) playing the young Coleman Silk. Sad to have to hide your heritage and I truly felt Silk's frustration with the whole "spooks" incident. 02/13

A chance circumstance of birth. One child might be handsome, one may be deformed. One never knows what advantages or disadvantages they will be bestowed in life. A fascinating tale of self hatred, undeserved and unnecessary. But not surprising for the time period. When we can't show who we really are, isn't that what we are doing? An unusual story, but most likely a common one. Played understated by both Nicole Kidman and Anthony Hopkins. Ed Harris is menacing as soon as he appears on screen. Gary Sinise is as we, the audience,knowing nothing. Then gradually, it is slowly revealed like an onion. Layer after layer. Nicole Kidman obviously did her research on battered women. It all rings true.Each character struggling with what they do and do not know. What do they choose to do with that? Wentworth Miller was a brilliant choice as the young Coleman.The irony in that casting is revealed in the trivia notes, so don't read them until the film is over. I was enthralled by this film and count it among my favorites of all time.

I would like to like The Human Stain. A picture with Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, what could be better. I don't know Philip Roth's novel on which the movie is based, but he had a reputation as a good novelist. But for me, the picture failed in so many areas. True, there was some good acting, but not by the principles. Mr. Hopkins was called on to play a black man, who decides to pass the line to live as a white man, who takes on the persona of a Jew! That's a lot to ask, even for such an accomplished actor as Mr. Hopkins. So the facial expression of concern he shows in the film, seem to be more about what he's doing in the picture in the first place. Ms. Kidman, although a versatile player, is far too cerebral a performer to take on a tough, uneducated woman, a traveler in all the wrong places, and I think it's a reach to believe that familial abuse would turn her into what she is. Was that why she screamed her way through the part? Besides, she's too pretty for the role as presented. Simply two sad cases of miscasting.But more then that, the screen play and writing are flawed. We're asked to believe that a long-term college dean is called on the carpet because of an ambiguous racial reference? The narrative of the picture is abruptly cut with flashbacks just as ambiguous, and the overall effect was not a satisfied viewing of a plot that verged on the edge of being hackneyed. Or too stained to wear well if you will.