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Adapting a great novel can be a daunting task. You risk alienating readers, ticking off the novelist but, more importantly, making an absolute ass of yourself. Philip Roth’s marvelous novel The Human Stain tackled a number of themes and fears that run bone deep to the very skeleton that holds America together. Robert Benton’s (“Kramer vs. Kramer”) thoughtful adaptation streamlines the complex narrative to make it into a more cohesive film. The results are mixed but very, very rewarding. Although it doesn’t quite touch the same depths as Roth’s novel, the performances that Benton inspires from his leads Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Gary Sinise and Ed Harris allows us to look beyond the surface of the characters they play. The best acting is translucent without being transparent. We can’t get into the heads of actors or see things in a film the same way we can read them in a novel but, when all the elements come together in a movie, a film can be just as powerful in its own, unique way. ***

Hopkins plays Coleman Silk a classics professor who has denied who he is for years. He’s a man who was never comfortable in his own skin so he made a suit of lies to cover up the truths that define his and our world. Wrongly accused of a racial slur, Silk resigns from the faculty of the college he teaches at. When his wife dies shortly after he tenders his resignation, Silk embarks on an odyssey of self discovery. He befriends a popular novelist (Sinise) who has gone into seclusion. He also embarks on an affair with Faunia Farley (Kidman) a cleaning woman who is nearly forty years younger than him. On the surface they have nothing in common. Her disturbed husband (Harris) stalks her and there’s a deep sadness that seems to emanate from her very soul. She, like Silk, has a dark secret in her past that has left deep scars. Silk discovers that his own dark secret made him less than he could be and hiding it from everyone (including his wife) has, in fact, made him a party to the very thing he detests. ---

“The Human Stain” carries a light load when it comes to the extras. We get a “Behind the Scenes” special that provides some insight into both the difficulty that screenwriter Meyer and director Benton had in translating such a rich novel to the screen. We also hear from the actors involved and their brief but intelligent comments on their characters. There’s also a touching, lovely tribute to cinematographer Jean Yves Escoffier who died shortly after the film was completed. ---