On with the Truman myth

Rating: Null/10 (24 December 2005)

"Capote" is a factual account, and that is to say it's loosely based on the accumulated hearsay of Gerald Clarke's post-mortem biography, dealing with the six gruelling years that author Truman Capote spent researching his bestseller, "In Cold Blood". This was his masterwork -- a "non-fiction novel", as he called it while claiming to invent the art form -- about a pair of young drifters, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, and how they savagely murdered a farm family in 1959 Kansas, which eventually led to their deaths on the gallows at Leavenworth. A stark and equally famous 1967 film was adapted from this book, and "Capote" is a very calculated companion piece, in terms of mood and pacing and general bleakness. It fills in the blanks of what Capote left out of his book, namely his own very active and high profile role in the case, and in the lives of the people involved, especially the killers. Capote, with stunning efficiency, kept himself a completely invisible presence in the book and the later film.
It's a portrait of journalistic ruthlessness, reminiscent of Billy Wilder's biting film satire of 1950, "Ace in the Hole", and how such ruthlessness emotionally boomerangs. Capote was as much a professional charmer as a brilliant author, who rose from humble beginnings to the heights of New York society just by sheer force of character, turning himself into something of beloved mascot of the extremely rich, much to their later regret. In the 80s, he exposed their smutty secrets in an infamous chapter of an unfinished novel, that he published in the New Yorker. The rich, Truman told the dazzled public, use such things as menstrual fluid, in humiliating sexual situations, to declare their racial supremacy. It was pure social suicide, as bewildering as it was titillating, and this movie, though not referring to this directly, purports to tell us how it came about.
We join Truman in 1960, when he goes to Kansas to write about this obscure mass murder. Though an effeminate little weirdo, he employs his masterful New York social climbing skills on the Midwestern townsfolk and local authorities, and they're putty in his hands. He sweet talks and lies and finagles his way through the channels, and eventually into the confidence of the killers themselves. Only they can provide him with the story's grisly core, the cold facts of the mass murder as it happened. Focusing on the more intelligent and vulnerable of the two, Perry Smith, Capote chips away at Perry's resolve with faux friendship, which gradually evolves into a very real platonic romance between the two. Meanwhile, Truman's new lover's execution, which Truman has the means to help prevent or at least postpone, is something that must occur if Truman's masterpiece is ever to be completed. The film's wonderful conceit, dime store analysis at its finest, is that this prostitution of his affections for the sake of art and fame is what led to his own self-demolition, in alcoholism and betrayal of his privileged friends. Highly debatable in terms of accuracy, but it makes for a great, if sanctimonious, gossip fable.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is terrific as the diminutive oddball, catching the effete mannerisms and catty charisma that made Truman a talk show celebrity, and suggesting that this public persona was simply a tool employed by a cold and very troubled genius. Perhaps this extreme dead seriousness is, in itself, something of a flaw to the portrayal. The film is resolutely grave and low key, trying too hard to mimic the mood of the book and subsequent film it's centered around, while frantically steering clear of the situation's very evident black comedy aspects. Truman was, according to all sources including Clarke's biography, a preposterous human being, and his never-quite-sane shenanigans, even during this intense period of his life, had more than their share of high hilarity. A lot more could've been made of his culture clash with uptight 1960s Midwesterners, and his egocentric excesses that are well documented, without detracting from the story's impact. While "Capote" doesn't commit the unpardonable sin of Jennifer Jason Leigh in Robert Altman's "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle", that of making a literary icon an aggravating bore, it does wring a lot of the fun out of old Truman. It's as if the filmmakers were scared shitless of making this seem like a sleazy character assassination, which, in essence, it is.
Where "Capote" does succeed, despite its over exacting cross referencing, is that it's a solid psychological piece in its own right. Leisurely as it is, it's utterly involving and invigorating, and I'd hazard to guess that one could appreciate it with no prior knowledge of "In Cold Blood", or the highly publicized life of this most famous of mid-century authors. It actually rises to that most daunting of challenges -- taking on an artist and his godforsaken creative process, and fashioning a piece of accessible cinema for more than just his hardcore fans. Of course I'm biased -- I am, indeed, a lifelong Capote freak. The guy and his books are fascinating, and though far from the last word on the subject, this fractional biopic figures well into the ongoing mythology of Truman Capote.