Professor Coleman Silk : What was Achilles so angry about? He and King Agamemnon were quarreling over a woman...A young girl and a body...and the delight of sexual rapacity...Achilles, the most hypersensitive fighting machine in the history of warfare....Achilles, who because of his rage at having to give up the girl isolates himself outside the very society whose protector he is and whose need of him is enormous....Achilles has to give up the girl....
When distinguished Professor of classics, Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins), asks in the class, "what are they, Spooks?", about two students who never attend his class, he is not aware that those students are of African-American origin and his comment is misconstrued as a racist remark. Enraged over the audacity of the allegation against him, he quits his job and while telling his wife about the incident, his wife ,Iris, dies of a heart attack. Coleman Silk is a man with secrets - secrets that'd tell us why he'd be the last person to be involved in any form of racism. What follows is an intense drama revolving around the tagline of the movie - "How far would you go to escape the past?"
Six months after the death of his wife, Coleman Silk meets reclusive writer, Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), and asks him to write the story of his life and how he was wronged at the university that he helped to build. Though later he only realizes that his book might just sound like the "ravings of a lunatic". As he falls in love with a 34-year old separated woman, Faunia (Nicole Kidman), who is unpredictable and needy at times and nowhere in his league, he risks losing his friends and his reputation as stories fly around in that small town. What attracts Coleman to Faunia is perhaps the fact that she isn't superficial and would never judge him because of her own dark past.
Throughout the movie, we are shown flashbacks from his past and slowly his secret unfolds. Although he is light-skinned enough to pass himself off as a white, he is actually of African-American descent. He hides the fact from his first girlfriend, Steena Paulsson (Jacinda Barrett), even though later he invites her home to meet his mother. What follows is an awkward and embarrassing dinner for everyone, even though Steena tries to hide her true feelings and tries to keep the conversation going. After losing Steena, Coleman goes back into the boxing ring (where he had won all his previous eleven games before retiring to respect his father's wishes) and treats his black opponent with extreme prejudice while calling him a "nigger". We can almost feel the parallels between his past and the story of Achilles that he was teaching his class. After treating his mother with contempt and disregard because of his own shame at being from the colored race, he severs all relationships with his family to start afresh. At his last meeting with his mother, she says, "Funny, I never thought of you as black or white. You were my golden boy....You think like a prisoner. You are white as snow, and you act like a slave". He moves on and marries another white woman, Iris, and keeps from her his secret by telling her he has no surviving family members. After the death of Coleman and Faunia in a car accident, Coleman's sister meets Nathan Zuckerman and more details unravel. She wonders in front of him if "any other man would do what Coleman felt he had to do...construct his whole life around a lie" and on knowing that her brother was accused of racism, she remarks, "Anything goes these days. People are just getting dumber and more opinionated".
The last conversation between Coleman's sister and Nathan would remind one of a similar theme in the movie, The Reader. Coleman could have stopped the accusation of racism in its track by just telling the truth about his own identity, but that was the one thing he couldn't do. Gary Sinise, as the soft-spoken and observant Nathan Zuckerman, gives a great performance as Coleman's friend and his biographer. It's not very clear why and how the role of Lester (Ed Harris), Faunia's ex-husband, is attached to the central theme of the plot. Perhaps it suggests in a way that Lester was telling the truth about his wife and that he never abused her or the children and Faunia might have just told stories to gain Coleman's sympathy. Or perhaps he was just delusional. That'd would probably be clearer in the book by Philip Roth of the same name. Overall, director Robert Benton does a great job at handling such a dark theme, even as he is helped by some great performances by Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman. And not to forget, Wentworth Miller (of the Prison Break fame) as the young Coleman Silk is extremely convincing as a person trapped in guilt over his own identity.
Rating: 7.5/10
