This is an engaging as well as challenging film

Rating: 10/10 (22 January 2006)

This film is a tribute to the acting talents of Hoffman, Keener, Cooper and others. It provides an excellent contextual understanding of Capote's complexity and his efforts that culminated in the publishing of a biographical novel. It showcases his keen ability to use others so effectively in his writing efforts. Particularly noteworthy was his ability to empathize, to engage, and to manipulate others to collaborate with him in his artistic effort to create his novel. He also exhibited an amazing memory for detail. Nothing seemed to detract him from his goal of achieving the supreme work of fiction. Capote was relentless in his pursuit to graphically record a terrible murder. I was further drawn to Capote's struggle to accommodate his role as a bystander with prisoner's role as a perpetrator. Capote had an uncanny ability to identify with that criminal's mindset. He used this to his advantage in gathering material for the novel. All of his energies were directed to keeping his subject alive so he could write his book. Capote manipulated the truth with the prisoner whom he befriended in order to obtain cooperation and to produce the final version his story. Was this coverage of a biographical event the source of his ultimate undoing in succumbing to alcoholism? The viewer is left wondering. This is an engaging as well as challenging film.