Restrained excellence

Rating: 10/10 (25 August 2006)

What a great movie! Story, acting, cinematography, music, direction and an intentionally deliberate pace come together to make far and away the best film I saw in 2005. One gets the feeling that everybody involved in Capote succeeded in making exactly the film they set out to... there is no sense of compromise, no striving for flash or excess, no need to hype anything...the story, stunningly calmly told, simply works.
Truman Capote, not a particularly sympathetic character, is not sympathetically portrayed. Philip Hoffman's astounding recreation of him is fascinating -- prickly and suave, Truman advances and retreats, and spirals slowly down, all the while creating an enduring masterpiece of writing, In Cold Blood. The vulnerable Capote's immersion in the aftermath of this awful crime ultimately claims him as another victim, the movie convinces us. And that's it. A simple concept, intricately told, and expertly realized.
Truman Capote's personal ostentation and fall is, ironically enough, captured in a film that has no ostentation itself. The movie Capote never falls below restrained excellence.