The Human Stain: Critic Reviews

Between the labors of simplifying the story for the screen and accommodating the stardust of world-class actors, an essentially, uniquely American tragic hero and heroine are bleached of real American tragedy.

The filmmakers explicate Mr. Roth's themes with admirable clarity and care and observe his characters with delicate fondness, but they cannot hope to approximate the brilliance and rapacity of his voice.

How does one even begin to list the imperfections of The Human Stain?

Works wonderfully as an actor's movie. The trouble is, that's the only way it works.

The problem is that neither Kidman nor Hopkins seems to know what movie they are in.

Benton, miraculously, has achieved the worst of both worlds. He has laid bare a great author's creaky plotting only to deliver a melodrama with bookish pretensions.

The nerviest prestige picture of the season is fatally undone by a Clintonian mixture of misplaced care and bizarre expediency.

Nicole Kidman as a milkmaid leading a hardscrabble existence? If you say so.

It's a respectable effort that doesn't quite gel, but not for lack of trying.

Even when miscast, [Hopkins and Kidman] are capable of spellbinding performances.

Rushes from the personal to the universal in an exhilarating victory for storytelling.

Here are complex, troubled, flawed people, brave enough to breathe deeply and take one more risk with their lives.

The Human Stain has those qualities we often want but rarely see in our films: intelligence and ambition, decency and humanity, poetry and pity, fire and ice.

The first hour of their movie is quite fine, at times poignant, but ultimately the filmmakers give us a love triangle that all but erases one of its legs.

The Human Stain strains too hard for profundity and comes up borderline pompous.

A platinum-class production that tackles the major hot-button issue of American racism and yet somehow never manages to connect emotionally either through its main characters or story.

It is hard to buy what The Human Stain is peddling.

The movie is fully worthy of the book, and will reach many people who might not have enjoyed the delightful experience of gliding through Mr. Roth's trenchant and zestful prose on the human condition.

An intelligent adaptation of Philip Roth's arguably unfilmable novel.

A compelling, sexy and often moving film.

When Kidman's on screen, the film catches fire. Otherwise, it remains unignited.

The stain of seriousness spreads over everything in this movie, eventually blocking out everything but the effort.

It neatly illustrates the perils of kidnapping a decent novel from its rightful home and exposing the vulnerable thing to the glare of a Hollywood camera.