January 13, 2004 -- I drove about 130 miles round trip to see this film in Fort Collins and was somewhat disappointed by it. I am certainly glad I didn't pay more than $2 to see it (not counting transportation expenses). It is a well-acted and well-intentioned film, but the plot (based on the acclaimed novel by Philip Roth) is laughably inept. Even the all-star acting talent of Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Gary Sinese and Nicole Kidman can't make the characters in this glossy soap opera believable.

Hopkins plays Coleman Silk, a college professor who loses his job over a supposedly racist remark (he used the word “spook” to describe students who had never shown up for his class). Some of the students he talked about were black, although he didn't know that at the time. The irony of this charge forms the base theme for the story. Silk's comment is innocent because of a fact he has hidden for many years. Silk hid this fact to further his career, at the expense of alienating his own family. He has lived a lie for so long he now has to live with the consequences.

After resigning from the college where he had worked for years, he begins an affair with Faunia Farley, played by Nicole Kidman (“Cold Mountain”). She has her own emotional baggage. Her children died in a tragic fire, for which her insane ex-husband (Harris of “The Hours”) blames her. Because of this emotional baggage, she is unable to commit to the relationship with Coleman Silk. The affair, however, revitalizes Silk and he is finally able to confront some of his past demons.

Just about the time all these conflicts are coming to a head, the whole story comes to a crashing halt. There is an extended epilogue. The movie staggers on for about 20 more minutes, but the story has been decapitated, and has nowhere to go. The ending is anti-climactic in the extreme. Gary Sinise plays an author who writes a book about Silk and the reasons he left his job.

One of the best parts of the movie is a small five-minute conversation between three people regarding the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinski scandal (the movie takes place during that historic Republican witch hunt). Unfortunately, the movie does not effectively make the connection between the Clinton witch hunt from the Right and the Silk witch hunt from the Left. In the book, this was a major theme.

Also in the book, Faunia Farley was an illiterate cleaning maid. In the movie she is a sophisticated woman from a rich family. Her bewildering inability to fit in with Silk's circle of friends would be more believable if her character was not the near-opposite of the character in the book.

Also, Silk could have chosen any background for himself he wanted, so why choose a Jewish background when that would hamper his career advancement in college? He was the first Jewish professor in the history of the college he worked for, so obviously, being Jewish was not an advantage for him. The answer, is, of course, that Roth himself is Jewish. That works in the book, where Roth has plenty of space to explain this choice, but not for the movie where it goes entirely unexplained. The primary failure of this movie lies not with the actors, or the production values, which are all first-rate, but with the screenplay adaptation, which fails on a basic level. This is an art film gone wrong. This film rates a C.

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Copyright © 2004 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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