Beautiful film about human ugliness

Rating: 10/10 (10 October 2005)

'Capote' is an excellent film, in some ways as excellent as 'To Kill a Mockingbird', in that it makes you think about how we, personally and as a society, attempt to brush under the rug the disturbing events that force, if not indeed blast, their way into our lives.
Truman Capote becomes captivated by the senseless murder of four members of the Clutter family in November of 1959. He travels to Holcomb in Western Kansas with his good friend Harper Lee (Truman Capote was the inspiration for the character Charles 'Dill' Harris - the overly precocious and fey - Summer friend who lives next door to Jem and Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird) It is Harper who is able to allow Truman to enter into the world of Holcomb and after a time - Truman is questioning any and everyone he can about whom the murderers might be and why they would kill the Clutters. After the murderers are arrested - Truman befriends them and begins to write the book that will become 'In Cold Blood'. 'Capote' captures the strange relationship between Truman and Perry Smith - one of the two convicted murderers whose life resembles Capote's except - as Capote states: He walked out the front door of their mutually dismal upbringing and Perry walked out the back.
The book 'In Cold Blood' brought Capote the recognition he long sought but at what price.
Beautifully filmed and written. The acting is superb and Philip Seymour Hoffman is the incarnation of Capote - which should win him an Oscar - but since Capote is a small film it may not garner the support it so deserves.
One suggestion the film's final shot might have been a long shot of the broad Kansas horizon - (imitated by Manitoba's vast skyline) slowly closing in on the Clutter common grave where Kansas Bureau of Investigation detective Alvin Dewey coincidentally meets Laura Kinney. Dewey is there to visit a family member's grave and Laura was there to visit Nancy Clutter's grave - they were best friends and had planned on going to the University of Kansas together. Then a slow pull back capturing the wind as it blows over the high plains and events that can never be taken back. (This is how the book 'In Cold Blood' ends.)