Capote Is A Must-See

Rating: 10/10 (12 October 2012)

Capote is a biographical film about Truman Capote, following the events during the writing of Capote's non-fiction book In Cold Blood.It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role together with Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr.,Bruce Greenwood,Mark Pellegrino,Amy Ryan and Chris Cooper.It was based on Gerald Clarke's biography Capote.
In 1959, Truman Capote was a critically acclaimed novelist who had earned a small degree of celebrity for his work when he read a short newspaper item about a multiple murder in a small Kansas town. For some reason, the story fascinated Capote, and he asked William Shawn, his editor at The New Yorker, to let him write a piece about the case. Capote had long believed that in the right hands, a true story could be molded into a tale as compelling as any fiction, and he believed this event, in which the brutal and unimaginable was visited upon a community where it was least expected, could be just the right material. Capote traveled to Kansas with his close friend Harper Lee, herself becoming a major literary figure with the success of To Kill a Mockingbird, and while Capote's effete and mannered personal style stuck out like a sore thumb in Kansas, in time he gained the trust of Alvin Dewey, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent investigating the murder of the Clutter family, and with his help Capote's magazine piece grew into a full- length book. Capote also became familiar with the petty criminals who killed the Clutter family, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, and in Smith he found a troubling kindred spirit more like himself than he wanted to admit. After attaining a sort of friendship with Smith under the assumption that the man would be executed before the book was ever published, Capote finds himself forced to directly confront the moral implications of his actions with regards to both his role in the man's death, and the way that he would be remembered.
The almost perfectly realized Capote -- stumbling only in the lack of shading it gives Keener's and Greenwood's characters -- offers a sobering glimpse at what the author had to give up of his soul to achieve his success.Philip Seymour Hoffman's riveting central performance guides a well-constructed retelling of the most sensational and significant period in author Truman Capote's life.This is definitely a must-see movie.