Though the title of Bennett Miller's supremely judicious biopic suggests a definitive account of the life of Truman Capote, the film itself focuses on one small segment which nonetheless altered the course of that life forever. In its essence, Capote is the archetypal story of a man gaining the world while losing his soul. But it has the same crunch of verisimilitude about it as readers of 'In Cold Blood' still experience today.
The meat of the film is Capote's relationship with one of the two boys accused of murdering a Kansas family. Artistic Perry Smith (Clifton Collins) is first seized upon as a rich vein of insider information, a tap to be turned on and off at will. Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) consequently floods his book with brilliant prose, but once it becomes clear he doesn't have an easy ending, effectively abandons Smith to the gallows.
All this makes for a genuine rarity: a biopic that seeks not to sanctify its subject, or excuse his many failings. Filling the widescreen with flat farmland locations, Miller and writer Dan Futterman have a particular gift for conveying growing distance: Harper Lee (Catherine Keener, whose innate warmth the film needs) soon tires of reproaching her travelling companion and, very sensibly, disappears to write 'To Kill a Mockingbird' instead.
As Capote's egotism - first flamboyant, later monstrous - starts to dominate proceedings, the film becomes more and more about another superlative (this time, Oscar-winning) Hoffman performance. One of 2006's most indelible screen creations, this Capote remains seared on the consciousness as, at best, a man apart; at worst, a creature from another planet.
One of the best films of 2005, Capote features a career-best, Oscar-winning performance from Hoffman as the talented but often unsympathetic author. The film details the writing of his masterpiece In Cold Blood, the genre-reinventing "non-fiction novel" that examined the murders of a farming family, and Capote's relationship with one of the jailed killers.
Leaving aside Miller’s undeniable skills as a director, it is, of course, Philip Seymour Hoffman's astonishing performance as the writer Truman Capote that distinguish... more >
Leaving aside Miller’s undeniable skills as a director, it is, of course, Philip Seymour Hoffman's astonishing performance as the writer Truman Capote that distinguishes this highly unusual film. The fashion in which the outrageously camp New York writer (with his high-pitched, strangulated voice) managed to insinuate himself into the unsophisticated Kansas background where the events of his non-fiction book In Cold Blood took place is handled with great assurance. Catherine Keener is almost equally impressive as the writer Harper Lee, who acts as the exploitative Capote’s conscience. < less
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Capote
