November 3 , 2003
NEW YORK TIMES
Assessing a Film That Lost Momentum
By Anne Thompson
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"The Human Stain" had all the right ingredients, or so it seemed. It had a cast with three top-tier actors: Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris and, most lustrously of all, Nicole Kidman, fresh from her Academy Award-winning performance in "The Hours." It had an Oscar-winning director in Robert Benton. And it had a much-praised literary source in the Philip Roth novel of the same name. Miramax, which had invested $8 million on the $24 million project, was so optimistic about the film as a prime contender in this year's Oscar race that it had planned to open it on 600 screens nationwide, the studio said.

But the studio hedged its bets when it opened "The Human Stain" this past weekend. The number of screens had shrunk to 160, in 25 cities, the studio said. The movie's $1.1 million weekend box-office earnings were less than stellar. Reviews were mixed at best - a lukewarm response that began two months ago, when the film had its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.

What happened?

The main criticism of the film, heard often among Toronto festivalgoers and critics and reprised in its opening-weekend reviews, has been that Mr. Hopkins and Ms. Kidman were miscast. Mr. Benton hired the Welsh Mr. Hopkins to play the erudite "Jewish" classics professor Coleman Silk, who in the story is actually a light-skinned African-American passing as white at a New England college in the late 1990's. And the regally beautiful Nicole Kidman got the role of a young campus janitor who has an affair with the much older Silk after he loses his job over an accusation that he used a racial slur in class.

One of the film's producers, Tom Rosenberg, of Lakeshore Entertainment, said the trick was to translate a complex novel into film terms while deploying a cast that could draw moviegoers. Would audiences accept any white actor as an African-American? Or was a British-bred actor somehow harder to accept in the role? Mr. Rosenberg insists that in research screenings, few moviegoers questioned the casting.

"When I read the book, Anthony Hopkins was who I thought of from the beginning," Mr. Rosenberg said in October. "I needed an actor who was very accomplished and who meant something in the film marketplace. I have a friend in Chicago who could be Anthony's fair-skinned cousin, whose parents were both African-American. I knew casting Anthony was grounded in reality."

To some Hollywood executives, "The Human Stain" reveals how dicey it is to market a socially conscious drama about race. For every "Color Purple" or "To Kill a Mockingbird" that has succeeded with audiences, there is a "Finding Forrester" or "Beloved" that has not. ("Beloved," based on the Toni Morrison novel, also had a rich literary pedigree.) "Movies about race that have succeeded have been largely inspirational," one studio marketing executive said Monday, speaking on the condition of anonymity. This executive found the Philip Roth title "off-putting."

"It's something that you find on sheets," the executive said.

In an interview on Monday, Mr. Benton, the director, said that "pictures like this are incredibly difficult to make and complex to market in a world that demands happy endings."

"In Philip Roth's novel, you believe that Coleman Silk is white until Page 84," he said. "If I had cast an actor of mixed race you would have known from the beginning."

Mr. Roth, he said, was "using passing as a metaphor for something deeper in this culture."

"He is talking about the notion that we can reinvent ourselves every generation, but while we gain our freedom, we leave history behind," he said. "If you confuse this picture with Imitation of Life, you are doing Roth and this picture an injustice."

The New York marketing consultant Ken Sunshine said films about race always presented a marketing challenge. "People are often afraid to confront the reality of the American racial dilemma on film," he said.

While "The Human Stain" has supporters (the critic Richard Corliss called it "elegant, thoughtful" in Time magazine), it will cost Miramax dearly to hold it in theaters through Oscar season. The studio is more likely to put its big marketing guns behind its more expensive contender, Anthony Minghella's $80 million Civil War drama "Cold Mountain," which is set to open on Christmas Day. According to Miramax, the studio will be chasing the best-actress prize for Ms. Kidman for "Cold Mountain," not "The Human Stain."

"Miramax shifted gears very deliberately," one exhibitor said. "If the film had worked better, they wouldn't be giving it to the art houses."

It wasn't always so. "The Human Stain" was supposed to go the distance to the Academy Awards on Feb. 29. But it has been dogged by schedule changes.

The movie started out with a Sept. 26 release date. But right before the Toronto Film Festival, in early September, Miramax decided to release the Ben Stiller comedy "Duplex" that weekend instead and move "The Human Stain" to Oct. 3, said a Miramax publicist, Cynthia Swartz.

In Toronto, the initial critical response was mixed. Roger Ebert, writing in The Chicago Sun-Times, described the characters as "complex, troubled, flawed people, brave enough to breathe deeply and take one more risk with their lives." But Peter Travers, in Rolling Stone, wrote that "Hopkins and Kidman are as mesmerizing as they are miscast." In The New York Times, A.O. Scott, while praising "the vitality of the acting" also found it "axiomatic" that Ms. Kidman and Mr. Hopkins were miscast. And the story, he said, "fails to cohere."

Despite the critical misgivings, Miramax decided to open the film, but on Oct. 31, almost a month later than previously planned.

"We wanted to do more grass-roots work," Ms. Swartz said in explaining the delay. "People responded to the issues of the film. We wanted to give ourselves extra time to raise educational issues."

Part of the promotion was to stage a major-city tour involving Mr. Benton and Wentworth Miller, the young American actor who plays Mr. Hopkins's character as a young man - at a time when Silk was making the anguished decision to forsake his race and try to pass as white. (In many reviews, Mr. Miller has earned higher praise than the film's stars.) Mr. Miller, who is biracial, was able to act as a "spokesperson on what the movie is about," Ms. Swartz said.

Miramax's chief operating officer, Rick Sands, said that the hope was to establish the movie and expand later, particularly among "an upscale, older audience, 60 percent female."

"We want to build word of mouth," he said, "which allows us to play the picture for the long haul."

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