Nicole Kidman is wrong for her part (Debra Winger would have seemed tougher, even Julia Roberts), but Anthony Hopkins does a great job as Coleman Silk, a professor of Classics at a New England college who quits his job rather than go through a racial harrassment hearing. His secret: he's an African-American passing for Jewish. He confronts redneck America--and dies.Philip Roth's novel was recommended to me many years ago, by my college roommate, a Roth fan--but it sounded a little grim. Then, the film came out in 2003, while we were in Uzbekistan. So I missed it. Yet, somehow, it crossed my Netfilx list, and arrived in my mailbox. And since in the meantime I had taught a course in Greek Mythology, and could finally understand the Achilles references as a result of my cramming to stay a week ahead of my students. And so I had also read Black Athena by Martin Bernal. And since I had read the story of New Yorker literary critic Anatole Broyard--the film was very interesting.
Of course, I have no idea how accurate it was about African-American life, or the phenomenon of "passing." But the human stain, the original sin, the secret that cannot be told, somehow it seemed rather Philip Roth, rather Portnoy-esque, rather more about being Jewish among Gentiles than about being secretly black. That's the "Maguffin"--the real story is about the psycho redneck who kills Kidman and Silk. Ed Harris does a great job playing him. He's the flip side of the University faculty, staff and administration that persecuted Silk and drove him from his job.
A thought-provoking, if not completely successful film...
