Review: "Capote"

brilliant.

i gush.

this film is not about capote the man or the gruesome killings in 1959 kansas about which he wrote in In Cold Blood. rather, Capote is about In Cold Blood and capote the writer's relation to his work and the story he covered for the new yorker.

i have not read the biography on which the film is based, and after seeing philip seymour hoffman's portrayal of capote, i don't want to. nothing more needs to be seen or read or heard. hoffman's performance is so wonderful that it is destined to be the way we remember truman capote, at least to the extent that we will remember him. in the same way anyone impersonating george h.w. bush is really impersonating dana carvey impersonating bush, hoffman seemed more convincing as truman capote than capote himself. in a scene in which perry smith has been reading one of capote's novels, we see the book lying face down on the floor, with capote's true visage staring up at us (it's the famous pose wherein capote is lounging on a chaise and looking at the camera desirously, though he looks startlingly pre-pubescent and vulnerable at the same time, all qualities that capote and hoffman carry throughout the film). by this part of the film, hoffman has so embodied the capote image that a real photo of truman capote seems fake, contrived, and disconnected from reality.

this film is, above all, concerned with landscape. that may seem a strange thing to say for a film about the writing of a book. but the camera-work, so brilliantly done, is always concerned with features: of hoffman's capote (the side of his face, which he always touches in glitch-like obsession; his prodigious chin; his perfectly preened hair; his mouth), of kansas (the train running along the flat prarie; the drab coldness of holcomb, the town where the murders take place), of new york (the cityscape), and finally, of capote's relationship with others (especially his lover and harper lee). in this way, i think, the film beautifully captures the way in which In Cold Blood is similarly obsessed with landscape, with features. In Cold Blood changed the way people not only wrote at the time, but the way they thought. the book changed the landscape of fiction, of non-fiction, of journalism, and of celebrity even. it's amazingly difficult to capture such non-tactile landscapes in film, but this one achieves such an effect. you can sense the shift in perception.

the film makes interesting choices as well. capote is portrayed rather bleakly, really, as both an attractive figure but a morally reprehensible one as well. the film seems to highlight capote's descent into pathological self-obsession, and doesn't try to rehabilitate that image too much in the end (when capote returns for a final visit to perry smith). i'm not convinced that the real truman capote was so self-involved and pathological -- but it wouldn't be out of the ordinary, really, for celebrity writer-types.

but even though the film portrays capote in such a manner, it is succesful primarily because it doesn't moralize about his behavior. the truth is that the real truman capote was an attractive, larger than life man. the film captures this and displays his celebrity not as a way to indict the high-stakes publishing industry or hollywood or anything else, but simply as a way to capture the mesmerizing qualities of a writer who, once he captured the fame and glory he desired, is at once unable to live up to the hype.

in this way capote was a true american hero: a cultural object invested with so much meaning that he had no choice but to fail, in the end. after In Cold Blood capote didn't finish another work. he instead descended further into pathology.

this, ron howard, is an american story. you shouldn't even be in the same industry.