A Fascinating Character Study

Rating: 7/10 (25 November 2005)

At first glance, Truman Capote is easy to caricature as an effete, liberal, New York snob of a writer. He had a soft, high voice. He lisped. His mannerisms were feminine. His first book, Breakfast at Tiffany's (based loosely on his relationship with Marilyn Monroe) is the sort of lightweight matter that would make you pigeonhole him as a minor author. But as Phillip Hoffman's masterful portrayal shows, Capote was much more complex. He was capable of being a warm, caring man and a manipulative careerist, frequently at the same time. His writing skills were first-rate, and he founded a literary genre than many have explored since his time.
The scenes where Capote interviews and bonds with one of the killers, Perry Smith, are extraordinary in their subtlety and depth. The two men mesh like the negative and the print of the same photograph. Capote uses their common background both to give Smith genuine moral support and to extract the particulars of his life and heinous crime that made In Cold Blood a blockbuster. From Smith's end, he uses the relationship to get a better lawyer for an appeal and fill the desperate void of loneliness within him.
Unfortunately for Smith, Capote holds the upper hand. To give his book a solid ending, he needs the specifics of the violence that took place that fateful night of the murder. He also needs Smith and his partner executed. He pushes Smith's buttons intuitively and expertly, alternately radiating warmth and professional hardness in order to crack Smith open for descriptions of the bloodletting. As the movie progresses, Hoffman's mounting anguish over the conflict between supporting Smith and pursuing his own agenda became both compelling and repellent. I wanted to shake Capote and tell him that gaining his objective would ultimately damage him. Evidently, it did. Capote never finished another full-length novel (although he twice won the O. Henry Memorial Short Story Prize), and he died from complications of substance abuse at age 59.
The movie is not without flaws. Between the Capote-Smith interview scenes, the movie drags. The sub-plot involving Capote's relationship with his lover never gains traction. And his friendship with Lee Harper (author of To Kill a Mockingbird) serves only to provide another perspective on Capote himself. But these are forgivable flaws in light of two of the best performances of 2005.