Human Stain

Theatrical Release Date: 2003 10 31 (USA - Limited)

UPC: 096009760199

Studio: Echo Bridge Home Entertainment

MPAA Rating: R   Contains:[Adult Situations, Profanity, Sexual Situations]

Summary: For his first film since 1998's Twilight, acclaimed director Robert Benton helmed this tense drama written by Fatal Attraction co-scribe Nicholas Meyer and based on the novel of the same name by Philip Roth. Set in the late '90s at the height of the Clinton sex-scandal, The Human Stain stars Anthony Hopkins as Coleman Silk, a respected professor at a New England college who suddenly finds his life unraveling after a comment he makes about some African-American students is misinterpreted as a racial slur. As the scandal heats up, Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), a writer researching a biography of Silk, begins to dig deeper and deeper into Silk's life. Eventually, matters are made worse when an affair with a young married janitor named Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman) is exposed. But amid the controversy, Silk must struggle to keep his greatest secret, a secret he's held for the majority of his life, from becoming public. Ed Harris, who previously worked with Benton in 1984's Places in the Heart, also stars. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

Category: Drama

Awards: Best Picture – American Film Institute

Human Stain

Format: Digital Video Disc (DVD)

Release Date: 04/12/2011

Audio: DD2 Dolby Digital Stereo

Runtime: 106 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Chapters: Disc #1 -- The Human Stain
1. Summer of Sanctimony [5:23]
2. Spooks [5:11]
3. Peripeteia [6:36]
4. Dancing Cheek to Cheek [8:38]
5. Faunia [6:16]
6. Life Story [5:42]
7. Full of Surprises [4:23]
8. All That's Left [6:00]
9. Not in Your World [6:20]
10. Dining Car [6:35]
11. More Than Sex [7:06]
12. Meeting the Folks [6:27]
13. Tell It to the Birds [7:25]
14. The Truth Hurls [12:05]
15. Drilling Ice Holes [11:22]

Derek Armstrong

Few titles convey unspecific malaise as well as The Human Stain, and few films address that malaise with such enviable starkness. Director Robert Benton brings to bear a career's worth of exploring the complexity of human relationships, and the top-to-bottom stellar cast backs him up nicely in a film that flew under the radar, but shouldn't have. Anthony Hopkins may not be far afield from his typical stately intellectual, but Nicole Kidman gives a harrowing demonstration of her range in the role of a dead-end divorc?e, and Ed Harris exudes frightening menace as a war veteran whose instabilities might manifest themselves in any way, at any time. Not only does each of the main characters -- who include Gary Sinise as a withdrawn cancer survivor -- get enough screen time to struggle with their very different and very personal injuries, but a healthy stretch of Nicholas Meyer's adroit screenplay delves into the distant past, seamlessly. It's in this portion that the film develops a new, richer layer of meaning that couldn't be divined from either the trailers or the casting of the actors. Yet the film's present tense is also dense with currency and insight, smartly set during the Monika Lewinsky scandal as a means of criticizing our guilt-by-accusation society. That Hopkins' professor could be ruined over his correct usage of a term that's been bastardized into a racial slur echoes several prominent real-world instances of political correctness gone haywire. Although perhaps a little thematically obvious, setting the film in perpetually wintry conditions reminds a viewer of other powerful films involving emotional scarring, such as Affliction or The Ice Storm. The Human Stain is well worthy of joining their ranks. ~ Derek Armstrong, Rovi

Cast and Crew: John Cenatiempo  Actor 
Danny Stone  Actor 
Rick Snyder  Actor 
Luc Morisette  Actor 
Jude Beny  Actor 
Edward Lafferty  Actor 
Stella Arroyave  Actor 
Peter "Sugarfoot" Cunningham  Actor 
Russell Yuen  Actor 
Brea Asher  Actor 
Neville Edwards  Actor 
Vito DeFilippo  Actor 
Nwamiko Madden  Actor 
Richard Mawe  Actor 
Richard Russo  Actor 
Kim Gandol Ferenczi  Actor 
Bill Rowat  Actor 
Tom Rack  Actor 
Terry Haig  Actor 
Phillip Collete Gervais  Actor 
Kate Whitney  Actor 
Jeff Perry  Actor 
Robert Higden  Actor 
Andrew Forge  Actor 
Jessica Shutle  Actor 
Deano Clavet  Actor 
Vlasta Vrana  Actor 
Pierre LeBlanc  Actor 
Jimmy Chang  Actor 
Sylvain Landry  Actor 
Laurent Imbault  Actor 
Philip Pretten  Actor 
Steven Grise  Actor 
Lydia Zadel  Actor 
Allison Pratt Davis  Actor 
Charles W. Gray  Actor 
Sylvain Dore  Actor 
Frank Proctor  Actor 
Andre Lamal  Executive Producer 
Ron Bozman  Executive Producer 
Nicholas Meyer  Screenwriter 
Rachel Portman  Composer (Music Score) 
Tom Rosenberg  Producer 
Bob Weinstein  Executive Producer 
Harvey Weinstein  Executive Producer 
Gary Lucchesi  Producer 
Robert Benton  Director 
Eberhard Kayser  Executive Producer 
Rick Schwartz  Executive Producer 
Michael Ohoven  Executive Producer 
Scott Steindorff  Producer 
Steve Hutensky  Executive Producer 
Evan Edelist  Executive Producer 
Dana Ross  Executive Producer 
Anthony Hopkins  Actor 
Nicole Kidman  Actor 
Ed Harris  Actor 
Gary Sinise  Actor 
Wentworth Miller  Actor 
Jacinda Barrett  Actor 
Harry J. Lennix  Actor 
Clark Gregg  Actor 
Anna Deavere Smith  Actor 
Lizan Mitchell  Actor 
Kerry Washington  Actor 
Phyllis Newman  Actor 
Margo Martindale  Actor 
Ron Canada  Actor 
Mili Avital  Actor 
Danny Blanco-Hall  Actor 
Kristen Blevins  Actor 
Anne Dudek  Actor 
Mimi Kuzyk  Actor 
John Finn  Actor 

Country: USA