« Back to Melbourne | Main | Finally getting somewhere! »
February 28, 2006
Capote
Capote
There is little doubt that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance in Capote is just about perfect. However, it is perhaps the ‘cold’ in the title Truman Capote's book that sums up the nature of this intense film directed by Bennett Miler that sums up the Capote for me. From the cold snow coloured location of the prison, the cold cells both in the prison and the house of the police officer, to the seeming cold blooded way in witch Capote himself bonds with the killer firstly awaiting trial then death, the films’ settings, photography, and overall muted colour pallet left me somewhat cold and drained.
The book In Cold Blood made Truman Capote a celebrity writer and also killed his writing career. Prior to his long and painful encounter with the murders of a family of farmers in a small community, Capote wrote for the New Yorker and for Hollywood, his most famous film adaptation being Breakfast at Tiffany’s. In his modest, but well-appointed apartment, Capote contemplates the daily news and comes across the story of the murders and immediately decides that this will be his next assignment. He co-opts his long time friend Harper Lee (To Kill A Mockingbird) as his assistant and the pair infiltrate not only the community, but with a little inducement, the gaol where the killers are held.
The manipulation by Capote of the police, and the prisoners is perhaps the crux of the story, but it is difficult to assess whether Capote’s relationship with part Indian Perry Smith (Clinton Collins jnr), killer of the family, is Capote’s quest for material or something more, perhaps even voyeristic. It is this ambiguity that makes the film so powerful, for while Capote is clearly gay and the work he is undertaking places tension on his relationship with his partner Jack Dunphy (Bruce Greenwood) Capote draws in and then withdraws from Perry Smith when he needs to.
Although this is a brilliant film and the performances are excellent, there was something about this film that left me drained, uncomfortable, and slightly repelled. It didn’t draw me in quite as much as Good Night and Good Luck – an equally claustrophobic film - despite being of an equal standard. Where Good Night and Good Luck is told from a fly on the wall perspective, Capote seems much more conventional in its production and story elements. Yet it is perhaps the coldness of the whole scenario, Capote’s cold heartedness, and the lack of relief that lowered the overall pleasure of the film for me. I certainly didn’t feel that the depiction of the murders was necessary and more could have been done with Harper Lee to create a respite.
What makes this film a cut above (and one that I will by on DVD) is the performance by Hoffman which is simply brilliant.
9 stars
Posted by andrewrenaut at February 28, 2006 04:29 PM