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Anthony Hopkins is cast as Coleman Silk, a Jewish professor of humanities who quits his
job in protest of being accused of racism. He storms home after throwing a fit in a
meeting with members of the university’s board, and his wife, in trying to calm him down,
has a heart attack and dies. For some reason, though, that never really gets explained.
Silk then hunts down Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise)—a writer who’s holed up in a cabin in
the woods, waiting for his writing block to pass—and Silk suggests that he wants
Zuckerman to write a book about the school and his dismissal.
Along the
way, Silk writes the book, never to be published, and becomes Zuckerman’s best friend.
But the plot gets almost all of its momentum from the arrival of Nicole Kidman, who plays
Faunia Farley, a janitor at the university that fired Hopkins. She’s got a dark past and
is only interested in sex from seventy-year-old Silk. Oh, and by the way, her
ex-husband, Lester (deftly played by Ed Harris), is crazy, and he’s stalking her—or at
least that’s her side of the story.
Silk is carrying a secret, too—and
while it should have been a shocker, it really isn’t. Zuckerman doesn’t discover the
secret until the closing moments of the movie, but the audience is let in on it very
early on. And none of the other primary cast members ever find out there was a secret to
start with.
This movie is worth watching for the actors, who all turn in
outstanding performances. Hopkins is terrific as always, and he makes his role as
believable as it could be. Kidman is really dressed down for the part of a janitor, but
her innate beauty is still something to behold. She has the ability to look normal in
all respects but crazy in the eyes like no other actress working today. Ed Harris is
always great playing the stoic or hard-ass, and this role is no exception. Sinise does
what he can with a role that’s basically a voice-over part. In the few scenes he shares
with Hopkins, he’s mostly there to give Hopkins something to play
off.
This is a good movie to rent, but I doubt that you’ll be impressed
enough to buy a copy
