Dark secrets of the past

Sheer folly, you might think, to try to turn Philip Roth's sublime novel into a movie, but this is not quite as bad as it could have been and there are some moments to savour. Yet, after jettisoning much of the narrative, Nicholas Meyer's script and Robert Benton's direction approach the remains with too much reverence.

Considering the weighty matters under discussion - the denial of ethnic origin for personal advancement; late-flowering love across the divides of class, intellect and age; the destruction of a career through the petty bureaucracy of political correctness - it would be churlish to accuse the film-makers of degrading their subject. But they are culpable of something; perhaps, like the protagonist Coleman Silk himself, of denial.

Silk (Anthony Hopkins) is a distinguished 70-year-old Jewish professor of classics who, after referring to two missing students as "spooks", is hauled before the college board over what is perceived as a racial remark. Unknown to Silk, who has never set eyes on them, the absentee students are black. Silk resigns, and, shocked by his treatment, his wife dies from an embolism. All of this in the first 10 minutes - no wonder Silk is angry.