The movie tries to tell the story of Coleman Silk, originally a poor kid from1930s East Orange who has remade himself into something else -- College Dean Silk [played by Anthony Hopkins], a brilliant classics professor. But then, a chance comment in class -- actually referring to two of his class cutting students as "spooks" (not knowing that they are African-Amrecans) opens Silk up to charges of racism, and his sudden attraction to a cleaning lady [Nicole Kidman] adds an element of class consciousness as well. It's a complicated story, presented with lots of flash backs and flash forwards, made more complicated by a secret the film reveals fairly early on. Because what the people accusing Silk of racism don't know is that he himself is black -- and has been successfully "passing" for white, for more than half-a- century. The movie's scripty wrestles with enormously complicated issues.THE HUMAN STAIN succeeds, but only partially. Hopkins seems an odd casting choice at first, but he turns out to be ultimately theright one -- is the stubborn Silk; Nicole Kidman is Faunia, the raw-boned cleaning woman he falls in love with. Robert Benton, of "Kramer vs. Kramer" directs, and novelist and sometime director Nicholas Meyer did the screenplay. One big problem is that how does a very lights sknned black kid born and rasied in New Jersey wind up with an aristocratic British accent? Hmmm?Audiences fascinated with the issues THE HUMAN STAIN touches upon -- class and sex, race and identity -- are better off searching for material that delves into them deeply. This story is not the Great American Novel but it does boldly confront the great American issues. The casting, is partly to blame for this fiasco. The unmixable Hopkins and Kidman probably was supposed to produce a big box-office draw. As the priapic Silk, the usually excellent Hopkins is too stiff, lacking the animal charisma to gulp down Viagra to frolic in bed with Faunia. Talk about lack of chemistry. You can more readily imagine her with Harris' certifiable loony character. And the usually excellent characters delivered by Kidman, in this film simply looks too glamerous to be cleaning toilets and milking cows, especially with her porcelain skin and tousled ringlets. And so, the film overreaches at times, and may not be as powerful as the material deserves. However, THE HUMAN STAIN is not exactly a failure.