Other Voices, Other Rooms

Rating: 10/10 (21 March 2006)

When a movie buff sermonizes, "They don't make 'em like they used to," have him/her watch "Copote," one of the best films to come out of Hollywood in years. It succeeds where so many other artsy features bite the dust. The direction is first rate, not too slow nor too fast. Take the exceptionally filmed scene when Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) is led to jail past a throng of curious bystanders. In the crowd is Copote (Philip Seymour Hoffman). The camera work is amazing. The viewer automatically sees the bonding taking place between criminal and writer on first encounter. Bennett Miller's direction is that good throughout the entire film.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of the few actors who actually become the character being portrayed. Ben Kingsley in "Gandhi" also comes to mind. Hoffman has the uncanny ability to speak like Copote and to mimic his mannerisms. His appearance is similar too. The viewer believes he/she is seeing Copote back from the grave. Catherine Keener as "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee is almost as good as Hoffman but her secondary part limits her scope.
The rest of the cast is fine with two exceptions, the killers, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, played by Mark Pellegrino and Clifton Collins Jr. respectively. Though they do their best, those who have seen "In Cold Blood" compare their performances to those of Scott Wilson and Robert Blake who were outstanding and near impossible to better.
The story centers not on Copote's life, though fragments enter here and there, but on the writing of his masterpiece, "In Cold Blood," and more specifically on his unnatural relationship with the cold blooded killer Perry Smith. Copote sincerely believes, "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." This is countered by Perry's sister's statement to Copote,"He'd just as soon kill you as shake your hand." His own sister sees through the pretense of innocence and excuses of a depraved childhood. Copote does not, because he becomes too attached to the similarities between Perry and himself.
There are two parts in "Copote" that are truly horrendous. When Perry finally talks about the murder of Herb, Bonnie, Nancy and Kenyon Clutter, in flashback the events of that fateful night in Holcomb, Kansas, are recreated. The direction is flawless which makes for nightmarish viewing. The sound editing is so refined that the gunshots will echo through the mind long after the shooting stops. The other is a vivid reenactment of the hanging with Copote being one of the witnesses. It is more grueling than the one in "In Cold Blood."
Copote was an intellectual who loved to babble. His parties were the talk of the world and being invited was considered an honor and a privilege. It was as if he paid for and set up his own little cosmos where he would be the center of attention. For him his greatest moments were on the talk show circuit where he became a celebrity. But at heart he was a creative genius with a tortured soul, hence his problem with alcohol that eventually killed him. Harper Lee was intellectually the opposite. She loved privacy and felt ill at ease in public. She saw through Copote's facade. When Truman wallows in self pity that he couldn't have done anything to save the two killers, Lee shoots back, "The truth is, you didn't want to."