Capote vs. Infamous

Rating: 7/10 (23 September 2010)

Every so often, Hollywood produces two or more movies about the same subject at virtually the same time. Sometimes it seems like happenstance, sometimes it seems like ego and sometimes it's a lesser production trying to piggyback on the buzz and hype of a superior work. If we're lucky, one of them turns out okay. Very rarely do we get more than that. In the two movies made of Truman Capote and the writing of In Cold Blood, we got two very good films, though one is far better than the other.
In November of 1959, a well-to-do Kansas farmer, his wife and their son and daughter were brutally murdered in their own home. The crime was so sensational that it even merited a front page story in the New York Times. That's how the horrible deaths of the Clutter family came to the attention of Truman Capote. A novelist and screenwriter of some regard, Capote is more renowned for his presence in the New York City social scene. He was the sort of devilishly irreverent and sharply insightful fellow everyone loved to know or say they knew. Capote first thinks to do a magazine article for the New Yorker about the impact the Clutter murders have on small town Kansas life. But after journeying to Kansas with his best friend and fellow author Nelle Harper Lee, Capote finds something more than a magazine article. Particularly after he meets one of the murderers, the complex and conflicted Perry Smith, Capote seizes on the idea of using fictional storytelling techniques to tell the true story of the Clutter murders and their aftermath. He pours all of his heart and soul into the work, only to be tortured for years as he must wait for the execution of the killers before his has an ending for his masterpiece. But in producing one of the greatest American books of the 20th century, a novel that changed the way non-fiction stories are told, Capote appeared to destroy himself and never wrote another significant thing for the rest of his life.
Infamous is a greater effort of filmmaking than Capote and I'm now going to praise the former at the expense of the later, but I want to first mention that Capote is still a fine film and worth seeing. It's just not as good as Infamous.
Fundamentally, Infamous is the better written movie and it's not even close. I t has more well drawn and meaningful characters, tells the story in more detail and depth and provides a much clearer picture of what happened and why. Whether it was Capote and Lee's interactions with the Kansas natives, Capote's place in New York's literary circles, Capote's relationship with his lover Jack Dunphy or his affinity for the doomed Perry Smith the other killer, Dick Hickock, Infamous is more informative, engaging and dynamic.
That difference in quality extends to the performances, though that's a bit unfair to the folks in Capote. The cast of Infamous is given so much more to work with that it was almost inevitable they'd do a better job. The greatest example is the distinction between the main characters of these films. Toby Jones' Capote is flamboyant, mincing, gentile, driven and both charming and distant at the same time. Philip Seymour Hoffman's version gives a few glimpses of humor and wit, but is mostly quiet, solemn and overtly detached. They have the same odd and Southern-tinged voice, but these performances have very little else in common.
That contrast in the level of characterization extends to just about every part. In Infamous, we're presented with an interpersonal dynamic that tries to explain why the effeminate Capote could be in love with the more macho and straight-laced Jack Dunphy. In Capote, they're simply presented as a couple with no real explanation of why these two men would ever be together. In Infamous, Dick Hickock is given a few scenes to show the audience how shallow and uninteresting he is compared to the wounded and violent Perry Smith. In Capote, Hickock is barely in the film at all and therefore doesn't serve as a comparison to Perry or the Perry/Capote relationship.
Now, only the actual people involved in this story and those who knew them can testify to which version is more historically accurate and personally fair. But there's a line in Infamous that says In Cold Blood brought a kindness to Capote's writing that hadn't been there before. That sort of kindness is absent from Capote the film. It presents the writer as a fairly nasty piece of work who only summons up some regret and remorse at the moment of crisis. Infamous shows Capote as a basically decent person who, under immense personal and professional stress, behaved in unfortunate ways.
What ultimately distinguishes these two movies is that I think Infamous is trying to be entertaining while Capote is trying to be significant. Capote is dominated by quiet scenes of no action or dialog that are clearly intended to be meaningful and moving. And if you're a devotee of New York literary history and already know well the story of Truman Capote, you might be able to make those scenes meaningful and moving in your own mind. But even if you've never read In Cold Blood or heard of Truman Capote, you'd still find Infamous a delightful experience.