The Human Stain

Director Robert Benton's quietly compelling adaptation of Philip Roth's emotionally complex novel has two conspicuous problems: the very beginning and the very end, both of which are arrant cinematic affectations untrue to the book (and the flash-forward opening squelches half the story's tension). But the balance of the film is everything one expects from actors such as Anthony Hopkins, who stars as an esteemed classics professor ruined by false charges of racism, and Nicole Kidman, who plays a troubled, distrustful blue-collar woman with whom he embarks on an uneasy and unexpected affair that puts both of them in danger. Through flashbacks to his post-World War II youth (where Wentworth Miller successfully captures Hopkins' traits without looking much like him), the film reveals that the professor has been holding on to a lifelong secret that permanently alienated him from his family, abetted his rise in academia, and destroyed his first love. A strong, self-possessed film that, despite its bookending machinations, strikes a nerve (several nerves, in fact) without ever being overbearing the way one expects from such Oscar-bait fare, this is recommended. [Note: DVD extras include an eight-minute behind-the-scenes special, a two-minute tribute featurette to the work of cinematographer Jean Yves Escoffier, and trailers. Bottom line: a disappointingly slight extras package for one of 2003's most prestigious if flawed films.] (R. Blackwelder)