Journey into Self-Obsession and Exploitation

Rating: 8/10 (24 March 2006)

It would be more memorable if its author wouldn't have been so arrogant and smug about his own writing. "In Cold Blood" was a detour in his storytelling, one which dealt into the darker side of humankind and fictionalized the true story of a small-town Kansan murder. It became a critical success, spawned a movie and series of the same name and made sure that people knew who Truman Capote was.
Its creation is the basis of first-time director Bennett Miller, who begins the movie with the murders themselves, and then shifts into introducing Truman Capote in a series of scenes -- a social gathering in which he talks of a friend of his wanting to write a homosexual love story between a white Jew and a black man; Harper Lee's cute denunciation that the comment made by the assistant conductor on the way back home was a practiced criticism which Capote himself paid for; his own assertion of himself in the eye of others. Capote in learning of this murder is somehow drawn to it and has decided to write about it: it would make great fiction, he tells his editor, William Shawn.
Off he sets to Kansas where while his mannerisms shock the locals, they don't stop him from getting assistance from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent in charge Alvin Dewey who has him come face to face with the killers, Richard Hickcock, and the one whom he becomes strangle attached to, Perry Smith. Here is where the film brings out the manipulative side of Capote. His relationship with Smith becomes an odd mixture of equal parts investigation, fascination, and exploitation. He isn't above telling Smith lies about the progress of his book, it seems, because like a schoolgirl, he seeks Smith out for everything but sex itself. The book, it seems, takes so long to come to fruition because ending it would mean ending his association with Smith and he doesn't want that. Even though there is a clear expiration date on their friendship.
Making a film about someone not just unsympathetic but with an affected, weak speech that could invite for immediate strangulation to end the pain is a tricky thing because either the person in question gets romanticized to some degree or it becomes unwatchable. Since Phillip Seymour Hoffman is on screen in almost every scene and he has to carry the entire movie on his shoulders, his performance has to modulate itself so it won't alienate the viewer and it does so. He makes CAPOTE his own when it could have been a tiresome affair because really, the man himself was a bore who thought he was interesting.
Hoffman's is no light feat considering this story is about the man who brought such light fare as "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Solid support by Clifton Collins, Jr. as Perry Smith, and Catherine Keener as Harper Lee. Bob Balaban, Amy Ryan, Chris Cooper, and Mark Pellegrino also turn in small, fine performances and round out a dark, brooding movie about the darkness within two men.