Classic Hoffman

Rating: Null/10 (2 March 2006)

Bennett Miller's 'Capote' is an excellent showcase for the talents of the always capable Philip Seymour Hoffman, an actor of astonishing range who has, until now, not enjoyed the credit he deserves. Tracing the decline of the fine (if fickle) faculties of a wit such as Truman Capote was never going to be an easy task, but Hoffman succeeds in making the writer, for all his conceit, self-absorption and moral duplicity, a genuinely sympathetic character  rather than a shadow of the self-caricature the author himself adopted in later life. Katherine Keener (again, an often underrated performer), as Harper Lee (whose importance in the writing of the source novel, 'In Cold Blood', is all too often forgotten, but is honourably credited in Gerald Clarke's study of the writing of that text which, in turn, provided the basis for this screenplay), provides solid, sympathetic support, as indeed do Clifton Collins, the ever reliable Chris Cooper (superbly suited to the role of the stolid Alvin Dewey), and Bruce Greenwood - as Capote's long-suffering partner.
My only real criticism of this film  superbly scripted and directed as it is  is that more could have been made of Capote's empathy/infatuation with Perry Smith. His attraction to the murderer is clear enough, as indeed is his growing sense of guilt at lying to and manipulating his subject in order to learn the truth of the Kansas murders which sparked his writing  but the points of parity between the two which helped establish their relationship are largely neglected. Perry's final 'revelation' is stark and, by all accounts, helped unbalance Capote's emotional and creative equilibrium, and greater detail of how the pair connected might have added weight to our understanding of Capote's 'fall'.
All in all, though, a thoughtful, sensitive and refreshingly stark approach to what in other hands might have been a run of the mill murder mystery