A rare modern-day masterpiece that feels like a product of the '60s rather than the present day

Rating: 9/10 (30 March 2006)

Capote is a great film  one that captures the cinematic aesthetic of 1950s and '60s cinema and does, indeed, come across as a product of the era. (In fact, presenting the movie in black and white rather than modern-day filtered color may have been a wiser choice.). From the opening, graceful shot of swaying cornfields to the punctuating closing frame, Capote is a magnificently crafted (if somewhat flawed) character study hiding behind the false façade of a standard Hollywood biopic (and it is so much more). The film's approach to chronicling its titular figure is pleasing and unusual  it doesn't chart his entire existence from birth to death; rather, it drops us square in the middle of a key event of his life that dramatically altered his own perception for years to come.
Directed by newcomer Bennett Miller, it is a promising and captivating character examination that takes place over a short six-year time period, beginning with the ruthless slaying of a family in Kansas in November 1959 and ending with the execution of the killers in April 1965.
Flamboyantly gay author Truman Capote becomes interested in the story and travels to Holcomb, Kansas with Harper Lee (Catherine Keener) to write an article about the tragedy. However, after meeting with the two young men who committed the crime, Capote feels compelled to extend the story into a "nonfiction novel"  and he even begins to have possible romantic feelings for Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.), a soft-spoken and sensitive man whom Capote feels a deep spiritual link with. He claims at one point in the film, "It's as if Perry and I grew up in the same house. And one day he went out the back door and I went out the front." The movie does have a few problems, primarily its editing  which is sloppy, unnecessarily slow at times and yet at other points much too fast. The direction is not superb or showy, although I think Miller's conservative approach is in part to adapt to the style of cinema from a half-century ago. Furthermore, considering the fact that this is Miller's second movie, it is still very impressive and vastly superior to the direction of Paul Haggis' noisy, flashy "Crash." Hoffman, the P.T. Anderson regular who has come to be known amongst film buffs as one of the generation's finest character actors (he is for his generation what Steve Buscemi, Peter Lorre and Harry Dean Stanton were for theirs), buries himself inside Truman Capote. You simply forget you are watching the sleazy phone sex kingpin from "Punch-Drunk Love"  he disappears inside his role. Every mannerism, every verbal pronunciation  it's all nailed perfectly. His Best Actor grab was well deserved rivaled only perhaps by Joaquin Phoenix's embodiment of Johnny Cash in Walk the Line.
Capote is a splendid character film, one that examines the manipulation and self-centeredness of its "hero" and isn't afraid to expose his lesser qualities. The film does not pander to its audience, nor does it cater to the standards of the Biopic. Its few flaws  such as its inability to present Harper Lee and other supporting characters as well-rounded people, or its lackluster editing  don't detract from the overall product, which is an incredibly tasteful and artistic examination of greed, betrayal, love and heartbreak. The movie is about Capote's experience writing In Cold Blood  rather than his entire life -- for a reason, and that reason is made vibrantly clear by the end of the film.