Maybe one of the difficulties with turning a novel into a movie — besides the obvious differences of duration and technique — is that the filmmakers have the book's characters in their heads while the audience must make do with the digest on the screen. Nicole Kidman's character in The Human Stain has dysfunctional relationships with her parents and men. Do you want to guess why? She was abused. Maybe there's more to this woman than that, but not much of it appears in the movie. She tells a bit of her past to a bird in a cage, but it's hard to pay attention to characters who do such things, no matter how heavy the symbolism. Maybe what's on the screen is a wholly consistent, merely incomplete portrayal of the character in the book. Not having read the book, I can't say, but I can say that it's an incomplete portrayal of a human being, not because it leaves parts of her life out, which it must, but because it deems those invisible aspects irrelevant. Like that of the Tim Robbins character in Mystic River, this is a life of ellipses.
Those who place books higher in the artistic hierarchy than movies often state that books require imagination and movies, because they create the images for you, do not. But I can't think of anything that requires more imagination than believing Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman in these roles. They're both fine actors, as we know from other movies and even from this one, but not once did I believe that Hopkins is an African American who can pass for a Jewish American while speaking with a Welsh accent. And Kidman, no matter how much she smokes, doesn't seem like she's done a lot of "milkin'" to pay the rent. It's only Ed Harris who confounds my expectations and who at times really does seem like he'll take a crowbar to a couple of skulls and not think twice about it.
The movie is narrated by Gary Sinise, a kind of Ishmael to Hopkins' Ahab, a Nick to his Jay Gatsby. In a novel, such a narrator gives the reader an intimate, first-hand account and gives the storytelling a concrete point of view, the sober observer, but here Sinise comes across as a red herring. Perhaps the film equivalent of this kind of narrator is a hand-held camera, cinema verité. Or maybe there is no true analogue. Despite Sinise's voice-over, the movie never once appears to be from his perspective. He's just another character alongside the others.
A fair portion of the movie is spent in flashbacks to Hopkins' college days, before he picked up his accent while teaching abroad, and although I initially dreaded these hops back in time, they eventually drew me in. They make only the most dubious connections to the present-day story, but they contain some of the movie's most genuine feelings. There's also a nice moment in which Hopkins dances on a screened porch, and the camera glides along with him, outside the porch, as if he's Fred Astaire in a cage. The scene gets a little silly after that, turning into the sort of thing that appears in highlight reels at award shows, but briefly, while Hopkins twirls, the character and the movie seem to be in sync, willing to hang in the moment rather than ponder the epic purpose of the action. Like Hopkins hesitating in his car after meeting Kidman, and then deciding to damn the consequences, turn off his car, and climb into her barn, her bed, and her life, the movie is most convincing when it gives in to brief, natural impulses.