Bennett Miller’s CAPOTE, based on the book by Gerald Clarke, depicts the juncture in the life of Truman Capote (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) as he goes from being a respected author of note to the most famous writer in America. Certainly the book that triggered the transformation, “In Cold Blood”, whose writing process is the time covered in the film, arguably changed the way writers wrote. At least, that phrase is mentioned several times in the course of the film, and the book itself caused as much of a sensation with the reading public as the crime that inspired it. That grotesque fascination with the slaughter of a Midwestern family was explored and exploited by that most unlikely of true-crime reporters, the which he transmuted into exquisite prose by which he himself became consumed. Whether it was lust for the fame a book like this would bring, or that of a more carnal variety for one of the murderers, or even both, is the tantalizing mystery at the heart of the film. Capote himself remains a mystery, though one, like the man himself, that demands to be the center of attention, even if it means paying someone to pay him a compliment publicly.
The film begins with Capote, fresh from his triumph
with the novel “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” coming
across an article about the murder of the Clutter
family of Kansas in the back pages of the “New York
Times”. Almost on a whim, he clips it out and
calls New Yorker editor-in-chief William Shawn
(Bob Balaban) to announce that he has an idea
for an article for the magazine and would he send
him, on the magazine’s dime, to Holcolme to
cover the story. It is worth noting that it never
occurs to either of them to that the answer will
be no, even though this is as far from Holly Golightly
as one can imagine. Capote with childhood friend
Nell Harper Lee (Catherine Keener wily and homespun)
as babysitter and bodyguard, head for the great terra incognita
of the backwaters of the American Midwest of 1959, a place that
will not at first know what to make of the
forthright foppishness that has landed among
them.
the film. The way he takes in the staring bemused
look of the locals in Kansas as he stands there
perfectly composed and exquisitely dressed, and
responds by sensually stroking his scarf and purring
“Bergdoff’s”. Before long he has them, too, eating
out of his hand, with unlimited visits to the suspects,
Perry Smith and Richard Hickock (Clifton Collins, Jr.
and Mark Pellegrino) that include a photo shoot of
them both by celebrity photographer Richard Avedon,
and finding lawyers to go through the appeals
process when they are convicted. As in Capote’s life itself, everyone else in the film
is a minor player in the great melodrama that is
his life. Friends, lovers, and acquaintances are
there to provide an audience for him. What the
film, and particularly Hoffman’s performance
reveals is why those friends, lovers, and
acquaintances, all of whom could accurately be
described as long-suffering, were willing to orbit
his ego. He is lethally charming, not in spite of
the self-absorption and the disdainful bon mots
loosed with no more provocation than the passing
whimsy of the moment, but rather because of it.
There is to it a brilliant, calculating appraisal of the
audience, be it murders, glitterati, or small town
bureaucrats or the fluttery, star-stuck Midwestern
housewife gifted with an evening of tall tales and
undivided attention from this glamorous and exotic
celebrity, finding what will make them want more,
and then giving it sparingly to make them crave it
all the more. Yet, Hoffman’s Capote, in any situation,
in any company, is always himself, irresistible,
infuriating, and ultimately inscrutable beneath
the carefully calibrated veneer that could just as
easily hide a heart too easily bruised or one made
entirely of ice. He has the voice, the cloying whisper,
and the mannerisms that seem just a little too
studied in their femininity. He also has the hermetic
seal that keeps Capote in a world unto himself,
sitting alone on a couch pouring liquor into a jar
of baby food and swigging the resulting brew. It
inspires just enough pathos, in us and in those
around him, for the impenetrable loneliness of
the man to want more. The script by Dan Futterman, though, does not
pull punches about how mean Capote could be.
Lee has her question to him about what he thinks
of the film version of her book, “To Kill A Mockingbird”
ignored with a devastating casualness. He’s much
too busy wallowing in the self-pity of the latest
stay of execution that is preventing him from
being able to finish his book. The callousness
extends beyond Capote himself. As Perry
watches through his cell window as a condemned
man is taken walked into the death house and
brought out in a box, the action is intercut with
Capote’s first public reading of the work-in-progress,
the screen going back and forth between the silence
of dark, cold prison grays to the sparkling cream
of New York society’s thunderous applause.
A tragedy in the flyover part of the country
reduced to an evening’s entertainment on the coast. At one point in CAPOTE, the title character says
that people always think they have him pegged,
and they are always wrong. The brilliance of
Bennett’s film, and of Hoffman’s performance in
it, is that it takes the man at his word. The
contradictions, the unexpected actions, and the
obvious struggles with demons that he could not
conquer nor, perhaps, even understand, are as
compelling as anything he ever wrote.
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