Capote (2005)

I have it on good authority that the best on screen incarnation of Truman Capote is the lesser-known Infamous (2006) in which Toby Jones took on the role of the In Cold Blood author. Alas, I haven’t seen it. What I will say is that if these sources are to be believed, Infamous must be some film, because Capote is a magnificent piece of work. This is director Bennett Miller’s first full length feature; that alone is impressive, but the fact that he’s gone on to direct Moneyball (2011) and Foxcatcher (2014) proves that he has enormous talent. Capote focuses on the true story of Truman deciding that he wants to pen a book about the murder of a Kansas family in 1959, and whilst interviewing various people about it, forms a bond with Perry Smith, one of the two killers who are on death row. Philip Seymour Hoffman is astounding in the title role: sure, you might think, that’s to be expected, but this is up there is his best and that’s saying something. Capote is depicted as an irritating and slithering presence and yet in Hoffman’s company you can’t turn away. There’s plenty of excellent support provided by Catherine Keener and as Chris Cooper (always outstanding) but it’s unsurprising that Hoffman steals the show. And it’s not a showy performance; he playfully hints at his own homosexuality without it ever been explicitly voiced on screen (he was openly gay) but this is just one example of a side of him that is suggested at and possibly assumed by others. In this way he is able to get close to people (certainly the film suggests he managed this with Perry Smith) and use them for his own means and benefit. Capote comes across as a piece of work, forming faux friendships to gain information to sell books, but at no point does he ever feel remorse for this. The times we seem to see him drop his guard and offer some melancholic truth about something horrendous that happened to him in his past, we almost always see him gain trust from enablers whilst doing so. By this depiction at least, we see Capote as a confident individual who enjoys the high life, playing off his success as an author and using his distinct voice to capture a room in an incredibly efficacious fashion. Hoffman deserved the Oscar for this without a doubt, but Capote is far more than just Hoffman’s performance; it’s a tremendous period piece that doesn’t even tell the story of the writing of In Cold Blood really, it sums up the time and place through the vision of an individual who was distinct in nature and literature, and eccentric in almost every respect. 8.5/10