Hoffman's tour de force leaves little room for entertainment

Rating: 7/10 (22 March 2006)

It's easy to say actors are "born to play" certain roles, and, without question, Philip Seymour Hoffman bears a striking resemblance to the notorious writer and professional celebrity Truman Capote. But this is no easy ride. It is a film that ruthlessly exploits the perfection of its casting with constant tight close-ups focussing on Hoffman's extraordinary facial contortions and rambling monologues in his uncannily accurate tinny drawl.
We follow Capote as he researches his most famous book  the documentary novel "In Cold Blood"  a shocking story about the massacre of a respectable family in a sleepy Kansas town. In particular, it reveals how the author developed an eerie fascination with one of the perpetrators, Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr)  a brooding drifter on death row. This obsession ends up jeopardising the legal process and serves to paint Capote as complex, neurotic and relentlessly unlikeable.
At the endless fashionable soirees he attends, he surrounds himself with fawning sycophants  and even though he enjoyed famously close relationships with iconic women (including Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor)  in the film his cronies are faceless yes-men and ghastly society hags who hang on his every word and laugh uproariously at each self-congratulatory anecdote.
This superciliousness is neatly contrasted by the gruff Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper) - the Kansas lawman in charge of the murder investigation. He is unimpressed by Capote's patronising tales of New York high society, and brings some much-needed perspective to what is, essentially, a gruesome multiple homicide.
The two most important people in Capote's life gently attempt to instil some of this compassion in their flighty chum: "In Cold Blood" is dedicated to best friend Harper Lee (Catherine Keener) and lover Jack Dunphy (Bruce Greenwood), and they come across as caring and unbelievably patient, but both are criminally under-appreciated. The crunch comes when Capote is sitting alone at the premiere of the film version of Lee's even more revered novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" unable to offer her any congratulations as he is too busy wallowing in his own self-pity. This is the moment we lose any straggling empathy.
While his book contains exhaustive characterisation of the victims and the killers, the movie has little in the way of back-story. It is a troubling letdown for viewers looking to understand what is a shocking crime and develop compassion for the Clutter family. The flashbacks to the killings are late in arriving and serve merely as jolting snippets of ultra-violence, rather than emotional stepping-stones.
This is a movie that is unapologetically egotistical. Its fixation with Capote directly represents the character's own self-absorption. As such, Hoffman's Oscar is a triumph of role-ownership. He truly manages to maintain interest and repay the viewer's investment in a film where the detachment is disquieting and the lack of any real redemption is a constant niggle.
7/10