An Academy Award Well Deserved

Rating: 9/10 (12 March 2006)

Philip Seymour Hoffman's impersonation of Truman Capote deserves all the accolades it has received. It's not alone the mimicry of Capote's mannerisms and speaking voice that makes this performance so compelling. He also shows with devastating clarity the erosion of Capote's integrity, the deterioration of his personality, his pettiness (particularly the pique he displays when his childhood friend, Harper Lee, is lionized for her book, "To Kill a Mocking Bird.") At the beginning of the film, Capote is an outrageous but amusing figure on the New York social/literary scene, an already famous writer looking for his next sensational subject. By the end of the film, he has committed every conceivable journalistic sin in order to gather the material for his last and most famous book, "In Cold Blood." The film is a little slow at times but the leisurely pace is necessary to detail the exposure of Capote's character flaws and the, at times, subtle but steady decline in his humanity. Capote is in some ways a pitiable figure when the film ends but he's earned every last bit of the dislike he inspires. Capote isn't a great movie -- but the performance is incomparable. There aren't many Oscars that are as richly deserved as the one Hoffman earned.