Great performances, flawed story.

Rating: 6/10 (8 March 2006)

Bennett Miller, long time friend of Philip Seymour Hoffman, adapts this tale of legendary writer Truman Capote's struggle to write the great American novel. After becoming good friends with one of the Clutter killers, Capote proceeds to manipulate anyone and everyone in order to aid his new book In Cold Blood, including Alvin Dewey, one of the FBI investigators on the killings. Whilst talking to Perry Smith - one of the convicted killers - Capote forms a bond with the young man, and convinces him that he will attempt to help his case whichever way he can. He's lying of course, the book is entitled In Cold Blood, his interest could only be a purely selfish one.
What's good about Capote doesn't necessarily make it an intriguing experience. Philip Seymour Hoffman, now one Oscar up, is fantastic as the man himself, nailing all of Capote's mannered traits, yet is never sympathetic enough for us to truly feel sorry for him. Catherine Keener, who brilliantly plays Harper Lee - Capote's closest en-trustee - finishes her masterpiece To Kill A Mockingbird, and yet Capote barely even notices. Why should we care if he sympathises with a killer?!? The portrayal of Perry Smith is questionable. Miller's film shows him to be a mild-mannered man who regrets his actions, despite the real Capote saying he thought the real Smith enjoyed killing the Clutter family. Capote is worth watching to see the struggles that the protagonist goes through whilst agonising over his "non-fiction novel". He neglects everyone, from his partner to his friends, in order to get to the bottom of his masterpiece. He never completed another book after this one, descending into a celebrity lifestyle of booze-cruising and wise-cracking.
In the end Capote is too esoteric. If you have no interest in journalism, the process of writing or of Truman Capote himself, then Bennett Miller's film won't exactly send the taste buds tingling. It's well played, if a tad too slow, and certainly has it's moments. A slow film about a unsympathetic man. Capote is worth seeing for it's performances at least.