***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins, Jr., Bruce Greenwood, Bob Balaban, Marshall Bell, and Chris Cooper
Directed by Bennett Miller & written by Dan Futterman, from the book by Gerald Clarke
2005
98 min R
Do we really like our friends, or are they just useful? Not just in some lame, soap opera way, like advancing our careers, but do we only use them because they make us feel good about ourselves and serve as mirrors for the exploration of our own personalities? Bennett Miller’s spare and quiet film “Capote” examines this question by using the life of that great American novelist and wit Truman Capote. As played by the great supporting player-about-to-turn-star Philip Seymour Hoffman, he seems to have no interest in others except as a way to examine himself. We all do this, to some extent, but when you have as much personality as Truman Capote, it must be especially tempting.
The movie follows Capote as he researches and writes his final novel, “In Cold Blood,” based on the real-life murder of a Kansas family of four. He interviews the killers, sees the crime scene, looks at the photos, meets the investigators, etc. Yet audiences hoping for a crime story won’t get what they are expecting; all these things exist in a kind of blur eclipsed by Capote himself. We catch glimpses, but most of the time Capote is only using these events as a way of examining Capote. Several shots of the killers do not even seem to be in focus and Capote seldom shares the frame with anyone. One notable exception finds him standing over a sick convict, in an unmistakable position of power.
Capote lets a few people in, if not consistently, than at least intermittently. His live-in Jack (Bruce Greenwood of “Nowhere Man”) spends the first half of the film on the other end of a telephone. Fellow novelist, fellow Dixie expatriate, and close friend Harper Lee (thinking man’s hottie Catherine Keener) accompanies him on his quest to Kansas. When her “To Kill a Mockingbird” is published Capote is only politely interested. When they attend the screening of the film adaptation starring Gregory Peck he is so distant that we don’t get a single glimpse of the film. Capote is only really at home in smoky New York rooms, listening to socialites and bohemians laughing at his jokes while he swirls a gin-and-tonic.
Despite the hours he spends with the killers, especially small, sensitive Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.), we’re never quite sure if Capote comes to see them as people. He is close with the quiet, limping, and effeminate Smith, but, again, is this only self-examination? Is Smith only a mirror? Both Jack and Harper see through Capote but, like so many men of huge and insecure personalities, he is evasive. Even the chief investigator (the indispensable Chris Cooper), who comes the closest to confronting Capote, is somehow unable to get a good hold of him.
The dark side of personality is embodied by the two killers, who seem to have killed because of a vacancy between their ears. They’re not stupid, just a little blank, without more than a trait or two apiece. “Capote” struck me because I’ve often feared that I have it in me to be a real user of people, to be indifferent to their personal problems when there’s something I need from them. It’s convenient that I saw this film and “Hustle & Flow” within a few days of each other; both movies are about users of other people, one a novelist and the other a pimp.
The movie also considers “In Cold Blood” to be an important stepping stone in the sensationalizing of true crime stories. The “non-fiction novel” is still a subversive genre and the grand-daddy of “info-tainment.” We want facts, but we want them in the breezy, palpable style of lies. It’s not enough that fictional characters suffer; we can only enjoy the suffering of real people. The non-fiction novel is, in a way, an attack at art, catering to those dunces who come out of movies complaining about historical inaccuracies. It’s also fitting that “Capote” itself is a form of non-fiction novel.
Finished Monday, February 6th, 2006
Copyright © 2006 Friday & Saturday Night
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