The Human Stain

"How far would you go to escape the past?"

Dec 18 2003 R 1h 46m
Drama, Romance, Thriller

Coleman Silk is a worldly and admired professor who loses his job after unwittingly making a racial slur. To clear his name, Silk writes a book about the events with his friend and colleague Nathan Zuckerman, who in the process discovers a dark secret Silk has hidden his whole life. All the while, Silk engages in an affair with Faunia Farley, a younger woman whose tormented past threatens to unravel the layers of deception Silk has constructed.

Plot

This is the story of Coleman Silk (Sir Anthony Hopkins), a classics professor with a terrible secret that is about to shatter his life in a small New England town. When his affair with young troubled janitor Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman) is uncovered, the secret Silk had harbored for over fifty years from his wife, his children, and colleague, writer Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), fast explodes in a conflagration of devastating consequences. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all of his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life became unravelled.

Written by

Philip Roth, Nicholas Meyer

Directed by

Robert Benton

Cast

Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris

Crew

View crew

Production Countries

United States of America, Germany, France

Production Companies

Stone Village Pictures, Cinerenta Medienbeteiligungs KG, Lakeshore Entertainment, Miramax, Cinepsilon

Languages

English

Awards

3 wins & 5 nominations total

Trailers
The Human Stain Official Trailer!
Scores
# of Votes
32,917
Average Rating
6.2 out of 10
Metascore
57
Popularity
NA