* More tears are shed for prayers that are answered than for those that aren't

Rating: 10/10 (7 November 2005)

"Capote" is, so far, the best American film of the year 2005 (though "Good Night, and Good Luck" isn't far behind). It is an arresting docudrama about the eccentric author/celebrity Truman Capote that focuses on the period when he obsessively investigated the slayings of a prosperous small town Kansas family by two low level crooks and then wrote his magnum opus, "In Cold Blood," about the killers and the killings.
Capote called his book, published in 1966, a "non-fiction novel" and predicted, with his typical flair for immodesty, that it would be highly influential. It was. Indeed, it established a new hybrid literary-journalistic genre, and, for a time, made Capote the most well known writer in America.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the busiest and most versatile actors working today (25 films in the last 10 years), further demonstrates here the immense range of which he is capable, transforming himself - as if somehow he had literally shrunk his rumpled, stocky, 5-10 frame - to become the diminutive Capote. His performance goes well beyond the physical illusion of petiteness he creates.
As Oregonian critic Shawn Levy puts it, Hoffman gives an "...uncanny impersonation of a man famous for his squeaky voice and catty mannerHoffman is note-perfect. The wheezy laugh, the pain of work, the prying nature, the cold eye, the self-obsession, the ability to perform and ingratiate and wheedle - it's Capote you're watching up there, not some actor doing an impression."
The screenplay is brilliantly conceived. Rather than the conventional, slogging biopic approach, in which we would have been led through Capote's entire life to show us the man (who died of complications from alcoholism in 1984, just short of his 60th birthday), instead we get just a five year slice. But it's enough. Pitted against an equally complex man, the murderer Perry Edward Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.), the further reaches of Capote's deeply convoluted personality are mobilized and thus revealed.
Beyond the qualities Levy catalogs, we see Capote's arrogance and vanity, his shocking capacity for manipulation and disingenuousness (Capote just plain lies to Smith at times), and yet also the intriguing juxtaposition of both callous indifference and seemingly genuine tenderness toward the murderer (though the latter quality could be explained simply as a narcissistic gesture, self love extended outward by means of projective identification). Capote is willing to abandon all scruples to get the information he wants from Smith, but he also seems, at least some of the time, to care for the man.
All of that said, this movie is not simply a showcase for Hoffman's talent. It is a fully rounded drama in which both the structure and the acting ensemble shine. Collins, as the killer Perry Smith, is often a match for Hoffman's Capote: by turns chilling or vulnerable, but for the most part quietly opaque, Smith is literate, soulfully melancholic, quite possibly even lovable for Capote. Their relationship provides the core of dramatic tension.
Fine supporting turns are offered by Chris Cooper, Bruce Greenwood, Mark Pellegrino, Bob Balaban, and, especially, Catherine Keener (as the writer and Capote's "research assistant" Harper Lee). (Lee and Capote were lifelong friends and childhood next door neighbors in Alabama. Lee's own classic novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," was published in 1960, during the period covered in this film. It is virtually indisputable that the character of Atticus Finch's young son Dill in her book was modeled after Capote. Now 79, Lee, like Capote after "In Cold Blood," has not published another novel since "Mockingbird.")
Technically, "Capote" is splendidly crafted in every sense. An amazing facet of the film's realization is that the director and screenwriter brought almost no prior experience to their tasks. The screenplay was adapted by Dan Futterman from a 1988 book, also called "Capote," by celeb biographer Gerald Clarke. Futterman heretofore had been a film actor in small roles but hadn't written a screenplay.
Bennett Miller had directed only one previous film, the 1998 documentary "The Cruise," about a quirky Manhattan tour bus guide. Miller and Futterman were high school classmates, and both were also boyhood friends of Hoffman's. Hoffman had not sought out this project, but was invited by his friends to consider it.
In contrast, the cinematographer, Adam Kimmel, and the editor, Christopher Tellefsen, are veterans of their trades. They rely on close-ups in the contest of wills between Capote and Smith, and exchanges between Lee and Capote, but otherwise establish a good mix with middle distance shots of characters in conversation. The camera is always steady, the shots assured. Now and then, as if to add a further note of sombreness, there are long, wide, silent, utterly flat prairie horizon shots, silhouetting dark tree rows in the far distance (Manitoba stood in for Kansas). These occasional scenes are bleak, wintry, foreboding but also starkly beautiful.
For those interested in background reading about Truman Capote, I suggest a volume of first hand observations of the man, compiled by the late George Plimpton, entitled "Truman Capote, In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career" (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1997). Having thought about it more, I would rank Capote among my 200 all time best films (a mythical list that, for all I know, is up to 400 films by now). My rating: 9.5/10 (A) (Seen on 10/22/05). If you'd like to read more of my reviews, send me a message for directions to my websites.
* One of Capote's favorite aphorisms, he took this saying, attributed to St. Teresa of Avila, for the title of his novel, "Answered Prayers," that was published posthumously, in 1986. Capote had his prayer for lasting literary fame answered with the success of "In Cold Blood," but the project seemed to have left him virtually a wreck for the rest of his life.