Capote Movie Review:


Though he made a fetish of rubbing faces in his own loveless, sad childhood, the once towering writer-personality Truman Capote went from the get-go for the jugular of celebrity -- the fey blond divan photo on, and the theme of, his first book was a calculated career move. Its title indicative of that monomaniacal pursuit, documentarist Bennett Miller’s Capote examines the precious writer of stories, novels, plays and films a dozen years after that start, at what was to turn out his triumph as artist-slash-public figure at the same moment that it marked the beginning of his creative demise.

Immediately after screenings at the Toronto International and New York Film Festivals, the film opens September 30, on what would have been the author’s eighty-first birthday, and begs for consideration from two independent angles, only the second of which falls within the critical province. First, and outside that area, is the action within which the central concern arises, that is, the murders of the Clutter family of four in a tiny farm town, the arrest and extradition of two suspects, their trial and sentencing. To try out his theory that techniques of fiction in the service of actual fact could equal or surpass the traditional novel, Capote wrangles an on-location article assignment from The New Yorker. Once there, however, his ambition grows into a book, its subject the clash of sheltered Americana with the dark forces that lurk beside it, and its purpose to establish the “non-fiction novel.”

The success of In Cold Blood, six years in the writing and the inspiration for a theatrical as well as a television film, affected the course of American writing and journalism and thrust its willing author further into the beautiful people spotlight he courted and helped create. Not widely known to two younger generations, the episode is sure to become revived in the public’s awareness, with sales of the book to take off once again.

Even with, perhaps because of, its subject’s cooperation, Gerald Clarke’s book Capote took over twice as long to write and, augmented with the killers’ letters given him by the author, is the principal source for Miller’s friend Dan Futterman’s first screenplay. With dialogue reflecting “almost word for word” those forty-odd letters, the understatedly objective film would be what one might term “non-fiction fable.”

Accompanied by childhood friend Nelle Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) trains to Holcomb, Kansas, where she is to help research and he to interview, organize and write. Indifferent to, or ignoring, the rural folks’ reactions to his strange voice, appearance, manners, and refusal to accept refusal, he builds up a file so considerable that the project grows to unexpected proportions. Charming, cajoling, lying, buttering up, by hook or by crook, he worms his way, even to gaining unlimited access to, and the guarded confidence of one of, the two who have been judged guilty and sentenced to death.

The story cannot be told, the novel written, until the final act is staged on the gallows at Leavenworth, but, paradoxically, before time runs out he must get Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.) to reveal unknown details about the murders. A self-promoter beyond Wilde’s dreams, fluctuating between dandyism and loneliness, erudition and vulgarity, he uses anyone necessary. Why Lee sticks along for the ride is unclear -- they fell out, in fact, shortly afterwards and never made up -- though in the film version hers is the thankless, one-note rôle of seeing through to his shamelessly bribing a porter for praise or praying that the death-row appeals are denied.

Even Lee’s considerable one-novel success with To Kill a Mockingbird is not given much notice. All eyes are on Capote, as, for example, not once but twice, he bald-facedly lies to pathetic Perry. Abruptly cutting back and forth between plain Midwest and the fawning glitterati of Gotham, the camera cannot penetrate its subject figure: affected speech once in a while indecipherable, eyes as windows to the soul unseen behind heavy glasses, moods covered with alcohol and cigarettes, the little man remains enigma. The story would make out that he reluctantly does recognize the similarities he professes in a gambit to open Smith up -- abandoned childhoods and a longing to be petted -- and lazy end-titles tell of his subsequent collapse as writer and as man.

But just as Gore Vidal saw Capote’s having “made lying an art . . . even when it is inconvenient,” so, too, does Capote the film claim more than is there. At the center of this treatment as well as its human subject, there is a coldness around the heart which, intentional in both cases, distances them from the sympathy of experience.



Donald Levit

Who was Truman Capote? What drove this man to write the legendary true-crime novel, “In Cold Blood”?

In the new film Capote, you can’t really classify the film as a bio-pic but a sliver of one man’s very dynamic life. The film explores what happened to Truman Capote (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) when he ventured deep into Kansas in the winter of 1959. Capote was fascinated by the murder of a Kansas family by two drifters. He never realized that it would change his life, forever.

This is a very different kind of subject matter for the author of the novel “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and a complete departure from what he knows. At this time, Capote is the toast of high society in New York, a highly respected journalist, celebrated novelist and openly gay but now standing in the middle of the Kansas wasteland he must reach deep inside of himself to find the soul of this story. The soul of that story, he believes, seems to lie within the mind of recently captured killer, Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.).

As history states, Capote was never the same after his experiences in Kansas and after he wrote his most famous novel, “In Cold Blood”. What happened to this man in the winter of 1959?

“Capote” the film’s soul lies in the dynamic performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman who shines as this prolific writer who basically gave birth to the modern “true crime” novel. He is electric as throughout the film we always see Capote and very rarely see Hoffman. This for me was hard because over the years of getting to know Hoffman on screen, I was hard pressed to forget his very awkward performance in 1997’s “Boogie Nights”. Mind you, there has been a lot of character performances that have made me respect the man as an actor but I never was a fan. That is until now.

I was also quite blown away by the simplicity of the production and the quietness of the film. I have always said that often in film the quiet scenes speak a lot more then the ones heavy laden with dialogue. That is very evident here. I loved the lack of a musical score and the atmosphere rich without it.

I also loved that the film showed the deconstruction of Capote the man as he got more and more involved with the case.

My only disappointment was the fact that the film didn’t allow for the audience to get to know the man a little before Kansas. There is only one scene that shows Capote, the flamboyant and arrogant but that barely comes across in the allotted time. I think that the filmmakers needed to give us more of this side of the man so we could really be moved by his downfall.

Placing that aside, the film is an amazing look at a sliver of this man’s life. I just wish it would have cut deeper.



So Says the Soothsayer

Dean Kish

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