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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 04:29 PM | Comments (0)
February 18, 2006
Back to Melbourne
18 Feb 2006
To put it nicely the school at Portland and I didn't quite go together. The students as individuals were great, as most young people are, but the lack of authority in the school was a painful issue. The students simply did not have the respect for anyone other than their peers. Disipline issues were simply not followed through...
Moving back to Melbourne brings mixed feelings. After three weeks at the new school I already have more respect than the two years in Portland, there is a relaxed feeling amongst staff, and things are follwed up fast! Ask for a fan. Within two days the electrictians have instaled ceiling fans. Ask for a new keyboard. Requested as Non Urgent, and replaced unquestion in hours.
As to where I'm living, traffic noise, a cheap stereo, and a child with a VERY high pitched screech and must crying have replaced the relaxing sound of wind and waves. And upstairs is to hot to sleep on the many summer days above 30C. It seems you can't have everything. But it is only 10 minutes drive to work and a about 3 min walk to the station.
Posted by andrewrenaut at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)
February 05, 2006
Good Night and Good Luck
Good Night and Good Luck (Clooney, 2005, USA.) stars actor George Clooney in a role that reflects his fathers role in television in the 1950s. The film depicts the conflict between Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) and Senator Joe McCarthy. One of the things that makes this film interesting is that no attempt is made to depict McCarthy. Instead we have newsreel footage from 1954 of McCarthy's congressional hearings. In this way Clloney leaves us in nodoubt just how crazy McCarthy really was. Grainy black and white photography mirrors the newsreel footage as we follow the Murrow and his team, supported in a backhanded way by the managers - if not the shareholders - of CBS.
McCarthy's hearings are infamous for the way he accused everyone with even the remotest association with Communism with being an actual Communist activist. The parallels with Bush's America in the 2000s are pointed and fifty years after McCarthy we have not a war on Communism but a war on Islam. Clooney's timing of the film certainly hints at this association and takes the issue far more seriously than Woody Allen's 1976 poke at McCarthy in The Front.
The production takes a fly on the wall perspective and at times can be quite claustrophobic as it follows the crew through their research and presentation. There is absolutely no acknowledgement of the audience, except when Murrow talks to his television audience and his coolly detached mannerisms reinforce Clooney's chosen style. Social Values of the time are clearly depicted in the almost every characters smoking habits (cleverly satirised by showing a commercial with a 'doctor' recommending cigarettes) and the illicit relationship between a male and female couple who are crew members and told to choose who shall leave when things get tough and the show is scaled back. The Jazz singing interludes provide a perfect relief to the building tension.
Overall, performances are impeccable, and apart from a couple of very minor continuity glitches, so is the production itself.
10 stars.
Posted by andrewrenaut at 03:20 PM | Comments (0)