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Preview by: Jack Foley
WITH the heady excess of the Summer now beginning to ease a little,
thoughts are beginning to turn to the Fall season in America,
where many of next year's Oscar contenders begin to unveil themselves.
One of the hottest advance words is reserved for The Human Stain,
however, a double-header, starring Nicole Kidman and Sir Anthony
Hopkins, which looks like a pretty safe bet for great reviews.
Based on the Philip Roth novel, the film follows Anthony Hopkins'
character, Coleman Silk, a light-skinned African-American professor,
who has lived his professional life under the pretense of being
Jewish.
When he inadvertently refers to some of his absent students
as 'spooks', he finds himself caught at the centre of a racial
controversy that leads to the revelation of his affair with a
woman half his age, Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman).
Even as he's getting professionally and personally discredited,
Silk hangs on to the secret of his race.
According to Entertainment Weekly (EW), in its round-up of Fall
movies, the killer moment comes in the form of a striptease, from
Kidman, that's said to be more revealing than her dimly lit nude
scene in the West End and Broadway's The Blue Room.
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But there is also a lot to be said for the movie's timing, given
that it is set against the Clinton sex scandal of 1998.
Director, Robert Benton (who has previously helmed Kramer vs
Kramer, as well as directing Kidman in Bully Bathgate), says the
title refers to 'the damage that human beings do to the world
that we live in'.
As such, viewers will watch as the life Hopkins has created for
himself is ripped apart around him, thus making for the kind of
gritty material the Academy and its member seem to love.
In fact, the film looks set to deal with some pretty weighty
subject material in relation to all of its characters.
Kidman's character, Faunia Farley, is also a troubled woman who
finds herself stalked by her psychopathic ex-husband (Ed Harris).
And as part of her research, the Oscar-winning actress spent time
at women's shelters talking to domestic-abuse victims.
She told EW that she would regularly ask women the thing they
really wanted said to the world through her character, to which
almost all replied: ''Show that we're not dumb.''
The film also co-stars Gary Sinise as a reclusive writer who
befriends Silk.
So what of its Oscar chances? Well, when you consider that Benton
has already won the award, and his cast has a colossal 11 nominations
and two wins among them, it's hard not to believe that this won't
feature prominently.
The film opens in America on September 26, after which we will
deliver a round-up of the critical opinion. It received its premiere
at the Toronto Film Festival
this weekend (Sept 5-7).
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