The Human Stain (or, Boy is my wife mad at me.)

The Human Stain: The Movie, The Book

Question. You’re a screenwriter? Someone hands you a moderately popular novel by a Pulitzer-prize winning author, which is 10 % plot and 90% exposition, heady and often annoyingly repetitive, and says, “Tee this thing up and smack it down the fairway.” You don’t like golf because of its association with smug capitalists, so instead you grapple with ways to make exposition seem like movement. You settle on two common devices: The Billy Pilgrim effect (you are unstuck in time) and character narration, which is the attempt to fuse a movie with its audio book. Does it work?
This movie flunked at Cannes and garnered some seriously ugly reviews, which proves to me that film critics don’t read books. Maybe that’s why they’re film critics. This is an instance where book meets movie and they mate. They are the two sides of a lean-to, which doesn’t quite make a love triangle.
Coleman Silk is a light-skinned black that made the fateful decision in his youth to “pass” for a white after a romance with a sultry midwestern blonde failed when she met his family and learned the truth. In the book, we also learn that he was ejected from a cathouse when the whore identified him as a “full-blood nigger” with his clothes off.
He became a successful Dean of Classic Literature at a cozy, sub-ivy college, but made enemies while re-shaping the department. He referred to two missing students in his class as “spooks”, not knowing they were black and the ensuing vilification by jealous, moralistic colleagues caused him to resign, after which his wife died of a stroke. He blames his colleagues.
Both book and movie allude to the moralistic societal campaign against Bill Clinton, but only the book goes into a polemic that Clinton could have kept the whole thing quiet if only he’d “ass-fucked” Lewinski.
Silk, 71, begins an affair with a 34-year-old, Faunia, an embittered, trailer-parkesque cleaning-woman-with-baggage, played by Nicole Kidman. Faunia’s baggage is an abusive stepfather, an abusive Vietnam-psychotic ex-husband and two dead kids. Silk’s “last love” blossoms. Faunia’s ex-husband kills them both.
I’m not giving away an important plot twist here. The movie opens with the murder. Roth, more dramatically, withholds this information for the first third of the book.
The poly-critics all point out the poly-themes, such as racism, “racial passing”, the healing quality of love and the spineless tendency for society to hide behind morals. The book also explores the characters of Delphine Roux, Silk’s academic nemesis, who is a textbook study of defense mechanisms and Les, the psychotic vet. One of the high points of the book is the comic-ironic detailing of the anti-fear therapy imposed on Les by his vet buddies. They take him, repeatedly, to a Chinese restaurant so he can get use to being around “gooks”. The movie expounds on Les only with psychologist interviews.
I know and Roth knows, that all these themes are mute. There is only one theme that explains all human behavior. That is the quest for orgasm. It is the ultimate motivator and it is the foundation of all behavior: Coleman Silk’s abandonment of race and family as well as Achilles’ moodiness. Roth knows this, but it’s better not to say it or else we would quit reading his books as if they were mystery novels.
I note that director Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer) grew up in Waxahachie, Texas, which is near my old south Fort Worth neighborhood, not that this matters at all.
If anyone is reading this on Pat Fitzgerald’s web log, please note his refusal to publish my review of Batman Begins, which, indeed, was a nonsensical, drunken rant. You can find that review on my blog at http://billwoodblog.blogspot.com/ . Thanks for your insouciance.

I don't know why Pat wouldn't put this review on his blog?

Batman Begins, as does this review.


First of all, Fuck you Robert Ebert and praise you. You started off with “the movie is not realistic…” OK, Mr. Former Humvee, how realistic is a gastric bypass? Guess what, I’ve assisted on numerous gastric bypasses. I know exactly what they’re like. Obesity is evil and I’ve tried to fight it. But obese people are damaged goods who could never overcome childhood trauma, unlike Batman, who COULD overcome his childhood trauma. Yes, I’ve talked to all these simpering fatboes, who always want more pain medicines for any little thing. Batman would squash them like banana slugs in the gravel path. OK, I’ve not even watched the whole movie yet. It’s on pause on my oversize TV. I’m going back now to watch the rest of it and then I will finish this review.

OK. I’ve watched almost all of it, up to the point of the kiss (Christian Bale vs., Katie Holmes, now impregnated by Tom Cruise, and hey I’m cool with that). I’m inspired. I want to fight evil. I told my eight-year-old to fight evil, but he said he didn’t want to, but then shot me with his EMP rifle.

Well, I still want to fight evil. When I rented this movie at Hollywood Videos, there was a sign that said, if you like this movie, you’d like blah, blah, blah …Blade Runner. Oh man. Cut me with a scimitar. Blade Runner is my all-time number one movie. OK. Rutger Hauer was in this movie. Rutger is the incarnation of evil, at least as an actor. But, I suspect if I could only meet him, he would be a profound person, devoid of real evil. And there was one scene with the oriental bicycle-neon effects that gives the impression of Blade Runner, but not much more. No, this isn’t Blade Runner, but I dig it. Hear that, you saggy adipose freak.

Well, I really am inspired to fight evil. Maybe it has something to do with Famous Grouse, but you minions figure that out. I have always fantasized about finding a criminal in action (maybe a rape) and pulling out my 25 caliber Beretta, which I keep in my car (I do have a concealed weapon license.) and dispatching the rapist with a few words of significance. Like, “ You picked the wrong night to do the penis dance,” or something like that.

OK. I know that some of you out there in cyberspace have enjoyed my reviews and I appreciate that. But, this movie has grabbed me. For instance, I’m keeping an eye on my neighbor. One night, I came home and there were eight, (count em) eight cop cars blocking the entrance to my driveway (0.2 miles, gravel). I pulled up and the cop said, “Who are you?” I said, “I live down there,” He said, “You can’t go down there.” I said, “My wife is down there, get out of my way.” He did. Well, it turned out, some guys had invaded my neighbor’s house and tied up his (then) wife and said they were going to kill her. They ransacked the house and then left.

Now, it’s a number of years later and there’s a new wife and several kids. One is a fifteen-year-old named Jake. Jake always seems really friendly and waves at me, but then he’s running away and one time comes to our house and then one time comes to another neighbor (Naife, who gives really great massages), and the cops come and he goes back and then gets hit by Mike, but his mother says he threatened to kill them and described exactly how he’d do it and in what room, etc. I’m just watching right now. Just like Batman. Just like Christian Bale, who was great in American Psycho.

My friend Pat? He’s got some really heavy artillery. I mean really heavy. He’s let me shoot this stuff at Tri County. Bad guys, I’m just waiting. If you’re not Batman, you’re Bad Man.