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| Released: |
2005 |
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| Genre: |
BIOPIC
DRAMA
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
110 |
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Coldly accurate character dissection. |
Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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| Great artists rarely turn out to be good men. I met Truman Capote once in New York, and he struck me as egocentric, obnoxious and downright creepy. With his weirdly high voice and an endless stream of bitchy comments and brazen name-dropping, he resembled an elderly, diminutive Graham Norton trying to pass himself off – not very successfully - as Oscar Wilde. So it is to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s credit that he doesn’t try to sanitise him. He truly inhabits Capote, warts and all, and in doing so discovers the humanity behind the monstrous facade. Even in a year of outstanding male performances, he will deserve the Oscar he will surely win, to put alongside last week’s Best Actor award from BAFTA. Despite the title, this is not the story of Capote’s life from cradle to grave, but an examination of one book, the creation of which both made his name and broke him. In Cold Blood became an even bigger literary success than Capote’s other well-known novel, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It even launched a genre: the “non-fiction novel”. It was a memorable examination of a shocking event: the 1959 killing of a farmer’s family in rural Kansas. Capote used his abilities as a shrewd journalist and shameless schmoozer to gain access to the killers and members of the local community. But in doing so, he became a kind of parasite. He lied repeatedly, to ingratiate himself with all parties. He called himself the killers’ friend, but found himself longing for his “friends” to be executed, on the selfish grounds that then he could finish his book. Some part of Capote knew that he had become corrupted, and he took more and more refuge in the bottle and New York literary society. His mood was not helped when his research assistant, Nelle Harper Lee (who, ably played by Catherine Keener, is the moral centre of the film) had a huge success with her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which today is more popular than anything Capote wrote. He never completed another book. Capote is not for everyone. It doesn’t take a stance for or against the death penalty. Its momentum is inexorable rather than thrilling. It’s never emotionally involving. The purpose of director Bennett Miller and actor-turned-writer Dan Futterman is to examine with clinical detachment the gradual disintegration of a writer’s personality. While I was watching, I wasn’t sure if I was enjoying it. It’s an uncomfortable, even cruel experience. But one test of a fine film is whether it stays in your mind. Thanks mainly to Hoffman’s extraordinary performance, this certainly does. | |
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Harper Lee: Catherine Keener
