Review of Capote

Rating: 9/10 (13 February 2014)

The creation of one of the most memorable books of the 1960s -- and the impact the writing and research would have on its author -- is explored in this drama based on a true story. In 1959, Truman Capote (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) was a critically acclaimed author who had earned a small degree of celebrity for his own work, when he read a newspaper item about the murder of a small town family in Kansas. For some reason the story intrigued Capote, and he asked William Shawn (Bob Balaban), his editor at The New Yorker, to let him write a piece about the case. Capote had long believed that in the right hands, a true story could be molded into a tale as compelling as any fiction, and he believed that this event, in which the brutal and unimaginable was visited upon a community where it was least expected, could be just the right material. Capote finds himself, throughout the movie, forced to confront the moral implications of his actions with regards to both his role in the case, and the way that he would be remembered. Most of the story takes place in a small town in Kansas, though scenes of it are in Capote's various residences. He is accompanied to Kansas by his close friend, Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), herself becoming a major literary figure with the success of To Kill A Mockingbird. While Capote's effete and mannered personal style stuck out like a sore thumb in Kansas, in time he gained the trust of Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper), the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) agent who was leading the investigation into the murder of the Clutter Family, and with his help Capote's magazine piece grew into a full-length book. Capote also became familiar with the petty criminals who killed the Clutter Family, Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino <3) and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), and in Smith he found a troubling kindred spirit more like himself than he wanted to admit. Capote also co-stars Bruce Greenwood as Capote's longtime companion Jack Dunphy, and Amy Ryans as Mary Dewey, Alvin's wife who became a confidante of Capote's. Capote is as much about the relationships and the morals behind Truman Capote's (and any other reporter or author) actions while researching for his book, In Cold Blood. The pace could be described as a bit too slow for the average movie goer, and after the movie is nearly half over, it feels like it is coming to an early end. Most people would back out, finding the story evolving too torpidly for their liking, but those who sludge through the low-paced beginning, will be pleasantly surprised when the pace picks up and the movie becomes even more captivating than it previously was. Right from the start, Capote shows off Hoffman's astonishing acting skills. His performance is more than awe-striking, further demonstrating his ability to make us believe that we are watching a documentary, where he is not an actor - in fact that character is not a character at all – it is the subject playing themselves in a story of their lives. Hoffman has a talent, with those fluttering gestures, the rolling eyes and the voice simultaneously soft and high-pitched, the sense of egotism and defiant confidence. When the movie first started, I was not sure that I would be fond of it. Actually, I was positive that I would not like it at all. Capote isn't the sort of movie that I would pick out on my own, and it isn't the type of movie that I usually enjoy. I believed that it would be a pretentious and saucy flick about an arrogant and annoying writer that I wouldn't relate too in the slightest. Let's just say I was proved wrong. Truman Capote, despite being egotistical and morally unjust on occasion, is a character that I grew to sympathize with throughout the film, and the film itself was so brilliantly done, I fell in love with the camera work as much as the writing. The thing that caught me more than the talented camera work, or the captivating storyline and plot, was the writing and acting of the movie's 'villains.' I always say that if a movie can make me feel sympathetic for the person that I am supposed to see as a bad guy, it's done a good job, and this movie did more than make me a bit sympathetic. Mark Pellingro (who played Dick Hickok), did an amazing job of playing a cool and collected criminal, who had never actually killed anyone, and would never show how much he cared about his friend. Clifton Collins Jr. (who played Perry Smith) was the baking soda that made this delicious cake of a movie rise, though. He took the lines and the script that was given to him, and a character that he was chosen to play, and he did amazing things. I have fallen in love with many a villain in my lifetime, but I think this is the first time I have ever actually sobbed for them, and believe me, did I sob when Perry Smith died at the end of the film.