Cold Blood Parallels the Murderer and Capote Himself

Rating: 7/10 (24 June 2006)

The movie Capote was well acted, by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and it represents a microcosm of a small part of his life during the writing of his non-fictional book, In Cold Blood. A large portions of the movie is devoted, somewhat unbalanced look on the murderers, which we only see Capote interviewing only one of the murderers, Perry. While we were left in almost complete darkness, with possible exception near the end of the movie, the other murderer, Hickock. The movie was not clear cut as to why he never engaged in any conversation with the other one. It is obvious that screening time for the other murderer would have helped at least for the audiences to compare the differences in personalities between the two murderers.
The movie stresses that Capote himself in a desire to finish his novel had to manipulate the prisoners in a somewhat less than honest confrontation with them to get the story he wanted on the night of the murder. Of course, he had to spend an enormous amount of time just to get that. As a result,he resorted to a somewhat cold blooded method of getting the facts by telling the prisoners false lies and that he is interested in the case, when in fact he isn't. It therefore makes you wonder the parallel of two not so bright thugs who murdered the family in cold blood, were matched with a person who is cold blooded, in a different way concerning the welfare or his actual interest in the two murderers. So in fact we can say the murderers and Capote were both cold blood, but in different way, one is real blood, the other is your attitude.
A more direct way to deal with them, but a gentler approach would have worked by bargaining with the prisoner that I will provide you with the lawyer to fight your case, if you please just tell me what happened on that night, and I promise you the information will not be released until the case is over. I think Truman did not try a more direct approach. It would not only save Truman an enormous amount of time, but it is also more ethical and that too might have save Truman's own soul in the future and as a result his own productive output. Who knows? That brings me to the other issue of the problem about that movie, it is whether there is in fact the writing of Cold Blood was responsible for Truman's own demise as implied by the movie. The implication is not that clear cut as that if you read encyclopedia descriptions of Truman Capote. His Grand Party he held was not even emphasized, it just showed him only just a small player, where in fact it is well known that he is in fact a major player. These are some mistakes that I would like to point out, if only the movie can show this casual relationship between the writing of Cold Blood did in fact lead to his demise. I for one still can't see it and his output in writing for short stories and novels does in fact continue right until up to his own death. So the problem of the movie appears to be a somewhat inaccurate portrayal of historical facts with the movie. The movie would have been better if people would have known that he does make himself a bigger than life character, instead of just someone enjoying the party, instead of the Party Master himself.