A Story of Two Men Who Had Something in Common.

Rating: 8/10 (28 March 2007)

Richard Brooks directed an earlier version of Capote's book, "In Cold Blood," in 1968 that seems in retrospect to have been made for a mass audience. For the most part it takes the point of view of the killers, Smith and Hickock, their childhoods, their fantasies, their travels, their barbaric crimes. Truman Capote doesn't appear in Brooks' film. Instead there is a journalist (Paul Stewart) who shows up at the end to witness the executions and mouth humanisms about capital punishment.
In this film, Capote is front and center, with capable support from Clifton Collins, Jr. (Perry Smith), Katherine Keener (Harper Lee) and Chris Cooper as the bitterly angry detective, Alvin Dewey. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is excellent as Truman Capote -- not just his impersonation, which is sometimes as difficult to understand as Son Soong's Cosmic Engine, but because he gives Capote a fully formed incarnation.
Capote begins to look into the case for a New Yorker article about how the murders of the Clutter family affected the small town, but after the boys are captured and he begins to get to know them (particularly Perry Smith) the short piece begins to look sensational and very bookish in length. The problem Capote is faced with is that until the death sentence is either carried out or some other permanent solution is arrived at -- Capote has NO END for his story! Well, you can imagine the conflict he finds himself in. He's under pressure from his publishers to finish the by-now well-ballyhood piece. But he has become friends, in a manner of speaking, with Perry. And Perry's death turns into a tool for Capote's professional advancement, a consideration of which Capote is keenly aware. (In sociology this is called "role conflict".) It is to Hoffman's and the screenwriter's credit that they treat this conflict honestly. There is no doubt that Capote is sincere about his friendship with Perry and Hickock and his desire to see them live. He helps find a lawyer to represent them at their appeal. (It isn't until later that he realizes his work requires their death.) And he weeps convincingly at his last meeting with them. But this doesn't prevent him from lying repeatedly to Perry about matters such as who chose the gory title for Capote's book -- "In Cold Blood." Capote tells Perry that his publishers chose it just as a working title for a one-night reading and that he had nothing to do with it, and that he hasn't chosen a title yet. But we know that he proudly announced his decision about the title to Alvin Dewey some time earlier. He also dissembles in order to wheedle out of Perry the details of events at the Clutter farm so that the book's popular appeal will be boosted.
So did Capote want the pair to be executed for the sake of drama? Or was he being sincere about his emotional involvement with them. The answer is "both". He was sincere, and then he used it as an instrument of manipulation. That two-dimensionality is what makes this a more adult film than Brooks' 1968 version. Capote, like all of us, is a flawed and very human moral entity.
"In Cold Blood" indeed. Alvin Dewey asks Capote if the title refers to the boys' crimes or to Capote's attempts to get them off. Hoffman hesitates before replying, "Why, the former." The script at times seems a little generous with the Capote character. He's given to telling amusing stories about celebrities -- true enough. But during interviews he's given the presence and demeanor of a caring shrink oozing unconditional regard. It isn't until the end that we realize that this is partly, but only partly, a mask for his ambition. Over the phone, after the execution, he tells Harper Lee that he is distraught because he couldn't save them. Lee tells him not unkindly, "You didn't want to." The direction is functional, the pacing deliberate. The photography is really magnificent with arty, if somewhat derivative touches -- a long flat Kansas landscape with a tiny train rolling along the horizon. The Clutter murders are shown briefly on the screen. Perry's hanging is shown too, but not from Perry's point of view, as it is in Brooks' film, thank God. Details of executions pander to our basest impulses. "Ted Bundy" is a good example of what I mean.
Capote was a good, clear writer, and "In Cold Blood" was a straightforward extended New Yorker piece, even if it was in book form. It was also a great success, critically and publicly -- "a non-fiction novel." It irritated the ever-envious Normal Mailer so much that he subtitled his next book "The Novel as History, History as Novel." Capote wrote several more fragmentary pieces about such things as the arrangement of paintings in Greta Garbo's living room, and he continued puffing his next book, "Answered Prayers," which didn't happen. The epilogue suggests that Capote drank himself to death because the effort of producing "In Cold Blood" destroyed him, but maybe he'd just written himself out. Or maybe he figured he could never follow up such a glorious success. Maybe when you get everything you've ever wanted there's nothing left to live for.