Capote (2005)

USA/Canada, 114 minutes
Director: Bennett Miller
Writers: Dan Futterman, Gerald Clarke
Photography: Adam Kimmel
Music: Mychael Danna
Editor: Christopher Tellefsen
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr., Chris Cooper, Bruce Greenwood, Mark Pellegrino, Bob Balaban, Amy Ryan

If you are a collector of Oscar-winning performances you must be familiar already with Capote. A prestige picture practically by definition—classy, ponderous Oscarbait with one foot in tony cultural history (Truman Capote! Harper Lee! Wallace Shawn!) and the other in lurid quarters of popular culture (conservative Midwestern ennui, mass murder, and crime scene photos)—it is chiefly distinguished by the titanic central performance of the redoubtable Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote. Hoffman took home the Best Actor prize for his troubles, in the process lending the project enough momentum to also win nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Catherine Keener), and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Hiding behind the mask of biopic (another winning Oscarbait gambit), it is actually less biopic proper than rote myth-making about a book, In Cold Blood, trying to make of it a Thing That Killed Men's Souls. Capote is precisely the kind of project that can tie me up in knots attempting to assess. It is an empty careerist vanity project in many ways, going through familiar awards season motions, yet incidentally packed full of indie cred signifiers that make bells go off in my head: Truman Capote, '60s fashion, New York City, senseless crime, Catherine Keener, To Kill a Mockingbird, period literary hauteur, Bob Balaban, empty Kansas plains (with wind blowing). Cool! Not cool! How do I decide?


Hoffman is amazing, of course. Affirmed. We can start there. It's fair to call it an iconic performance. From his first appearance he owns the screen, the way he speaks, the way he fills the space, the tone of his voice, the cock of his head, the things he says, the way he moves. He is strange, repulsive, seductive, and everywhere all at once. You cannot take your eyes off him. Full stop. It is a dazzling and remarkable performance. Yet for all that not unflawed—the magic disappears on occasion when the strain begins to show and suddenly it looks studied, or worse, in fleeting moments, like shtick.

As far as I'm concerned the best part is the portrait of the writer in his natural habitat, at work. It's actually one of the best movies I know in that admittedly limited regard (All the President's Men is also high on this list; Sunset Blvd., by way of comparison on the point, is not as good as either). Capote is most believable and interesting when it shows Capote focused on the single-minded pursuit of a story, a trait I admire very much as it unfolds here. Capote had a remarkable ability (remarked on more than once here for helpful emphasis) to retain spoken language verbatim, and so he is often shown simply sitting there and listening as characters recite to him passages of what will become his book.

The next-best part is the friendship between Capote and Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), who Capote calls "Nelle." It's an old friendship that extends all the way back to when they were growing up in Alabama, that fact alone about them so intriguing that I like the movie best whenever she is in the frame. The only book Lee ever published, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published during the time covered in this picture, ongoing as a side plot. Keener's performance is obviously overshadowed by Hoffman's—everything here is—but I think it could well be the indie superstar's best single turn, pushing her hard out of her usual likeably snarky range.

It's a pretty good script too, with lots of nifty turns and scenes. I very much like the way it moves through time. It plays a lot to Capote's Southern background as well as the level of his grit, two elements that work surprisingly often. "You know, I didn't know where to count your boy at first, him being half-Indian," says a corrupt prison official Capote has just bribed. "But I did him a favor. I counted him as a white man." Capote responds, in his soft voice: "You are a kind and generous man."

But ultimately the story feels muddled to me, a kind of character assassination exercise that leaves me cold. I don't know the Gerald Clarke biography on which the movie is based, but I must say I don't trust the treatment of Truman Capote somehow. I have mixed feelings about the depiction of him as a monster, which ultimately seems to be the primary intent. The nuances frequently run off the frame of the story into the murky darkness of interpretation that surrounds them. I already knew Capote was something of a scoundrel with severe substance abuse and other problems. And here he is fitted out as a particularly pungent monster, the tabloid journalist monster, insensitive, grasping, manipulative, venal, shallow, ruthless.

It's a bit of a balancing act all the way through. But when the end comes, and judgment is passed in these patronizing lines, it loses me: "In Cold Blood made Truman Capote the most famous writer in America. He never finished another book. The epigraph he chose for his last, unfinished work reads: 'More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.' He died in 1984 of complications due to alcoholism."

For me that's too easy, too reductive, and it cinches it: Capote, after all, is merely typical of all the various mainstream offerings at this time of year (looking at you Hyde Park on Hudson, though it does seem we are otherwise blessed with a pretty good awards season this year). It is a stunning yet often hollow exercise. It makes a powerful first impression, and then may never again be as good. My experience is that Capote is one movie where "I've already seen it" pretty much covers it. But don't miss it if you haven't.