Love in Cold Blood

Rating: 10/10 (24 February 2006)

The first thing that I noted about this Cinematic piece is that it has characteristics of all the great cinematography of the past. It deserves every award it can get. Unlike the original movie IN COLD BLOOD upon which this is based it is in Color. I think that Truman would be proud of this film if he were still living to see it. I have many fond memories of Truman when he was living among us although the claim that he never wrote again is inaccurate. Truman did write after IN COLD BLOOD but it was a steady stream downward from the heights that he had reached involving heavy drinking and severe mental depression. I never knew if Truman ever got psychiatric treatment for his depression but in retrospect it seems that he should have as well as for his grief over Perry Smith. The last straw was ANSWERED PRAYERS which he had begun to publish in four issues of Esquire Magazine. ANSWERED PRAYERS was an expose of all the high society people who had allowed TRUMAN into their most private lives and considered him a close trusted friend with whom they could be themselves with---including Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Chris Isherwood, The Paleys, Tennessee Williams just to name a few and these folks never forgave him and never took his phone calls etc after he had hurt them. ANSWERED PRAYERS was something that was a very bad judgment on Tru's part---probably as the result of his alcoholism. Alcoholics are often dysfunctional people and hurt others for their own selfish gains. While Truman did have an excellent memory; he often took a hidden tape recorder (this is has come into dispute of late but many of us know that he did) with him and taped his conversations not only for accuracy but legal reasons although many legal scholars might say that he taped his interviewees and friends illegally by trampling on their privacy rights without their knowledge. In ANWSERED PRAYERS, Truman betrayed just about every person that he knew by exposing them--ANSWERED PRAYERS never got off the ground fully especially when those in it learned of how he depicted them. Needless to say the Paley's and others were very hurt by this and quickly shut him out of their lives. Truman became an unwelcome a pariah in their eyes to be avoided like the plague at all costs and only the most loyal of his friends stuck with him despite how badly he had severely hurt them--among them NBC Tonight Host: Johnny Carson and his ex-wife Joanne--- the latter in whose whom he had come to live as a sort of permanent house guest. Mrs. Carson is to be admired for her courage and support for taking on Truman and giving him the support that he needed in his last years although it must have been very embarrassing to walk in and find Truman dead.
The set critics who seem to go to movies to find fault with the set people have found a number of things that are wrong with this film but that does not detract from it's superbness but I assume that this was because it was hurriedly shot without checking historical references. I myself noticed a major flaw in the execution scene in which the prisoner's handcuffed hands are in the wrong place. In arresting anyone or executing anyone the proper Police procedure is to have the subject's hands handcuffed behind their back to prevent any assault on the officers present by the prisoner or prevent making an escape easier. Despite this--the way this scene is shot gives the viewer the feeling of being the one being executed. Truman often said that he fell in love with Perry Smith which he did and it cost him dearly as it would in ANSWERED PRAYERS.
Hoffman has Truman's character down so accurately that those of us who knew Tru or were at least acquainted with him would in an earlier situation would have thought that it was really Truman. The disappointment of this film is that one is led to believe that this will be a biography of Tru's life so one expects to see scenes of his early life (which Hoffman as Tru tells) and life after IN COLD BLOOD. Instead we are treated to a history of IN COLD BLOOD--which has also been made into a movie that is recommended be seen before seeing this movie as well as reading the book.
The drama in this film is so intense at times that one barely notices any of the music once absorbed with TRU. Dr. Lee (author of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and played by played by Katherine Keener) plays a significant role CAPOTE but it is not clear to the viewer if she is there as Tru's secretary or she is there to write a similar story. (Dr. Harper's MOCKINGBIRD is also about similar case in which a Minister murders for insurance money and is then murdered himself at the funeral of one of his victims.). Much of the early part of the film takes place in Dr. Nell Harper Lee's (who is a lawyer in her own right and has multiple Doctorates including one from the University of Alabama) modest cold water flat, after she had moved to New York (she had formerly worked for an airlines). We are shown the two worlds of Tru---the glamorous parties in which the illustrati of New York are in attendance along with the luxurious world and the drab