Like the Real Capote...Always Compelling but Seriously Flawed

Rating: 7/10 (25 October 2005)

First off, let's get this out of the way. Philip Seymour Hoffman has received universal praise for his conjuring of Capote on screen, and it is all well deserved. For me, much like Jamie Foxx in last year's "Ray,", Hoffman becomes the title character. All the award nominations that are to follow are no joke.
Now, onto the film. The director takes a stark, low-key approach that is supposed to give the film a haunting quality. It works well in the early scenes where Capote and best friend Harper Lee are doing their research, but lacks gravitas in the end with the closing scenes at the gallows.
What the film does well is expertly show the distasteful charm Capote had that made him one of the main stars of the "Jet Set" crowd, and he was clearly the life of the party as long as you were sucking up to him. He was extremely self absorbed and unlikable at times, which is why it's hard to reconcile that with his interactions with the killers in doing his research for "In Cold Blood." He seems to befriend death-row bound Percy way too easily, and then lies to him to keep the friendship going. On one hand the film shows well Capote's obsession with the true crime that was to become the basis of his seminal work, but it seems to gloss over the relationship he had with the subjects and characters that latter inhabited that book.
In the end I'm not sure what the point of the film is supposed to be. You felt little sympathy for Capote or his subjects, but are left with a good idea of what happens when a talented individual becomes so absorbed with themselves and the idea of their great work, that they barely work again and die wallowing in their own self-pity ("In Cold Blood" was Capote's last completed book and he died in 1984 from complications from alcoholism).
The film does deserve some credit, though, as it made me want to seek out Capote's works, and in an even odder way made me wonder what the heck happened to the enigmatic Harper Lee (whose character is underused in the film and portrayed wonderfully by the always amazing Catherine Keener)? Her relationship alone with Capote (stemming from childhood) might have made a better film, and the film reminds us that her one and only work, "To Kill a Mockingbird" (which she was polishing up while helping Capote research his book) became more revered and well-known (every high school student in America reads it and for good reason) than anything Capote did. There's your real story.