Bennett Miller's first collaboration with his longtime friend, actor Dan Futterman, who wrote the screenplay, is an artistically fruitful one, as Capote comes off near flawlessly. It's hard to imagine anyone else in the lead other than Philip Seymour Hoffman, who captures the oft-imitated writer with complete dimensionality, all of his odd quirks and mannerisms are here (down to his nervous habit of pulling at his glasses) but he offers a real depth that goes beyond caricature.
What's also impressive is the filmmakers' willingness to let moments of quiet seep through, wide shots of the flat Kansan landscapes and small town Holcomb (which, Capote wrote, "stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there'"), mixed with the louder, more verbal, faster moments more appropriate to Capote's more natural environs (New York, parties, public moments). His pseudo-friendship with convicted killer Perry Smith (strikingly played by Clifton Collins, who I remember from Tigerland ), central to the film, is portrayed with appropriate layers of complexity.
Catherine Keener, one of my favorites, does a nice change-of-pace as Capote's more grounded lifetime friend, Harper Lee. And less heralded but also doing solid work is Bruce Greenwood (who was a fine JFK in Thirteen Days) as his oft-exasperated writer boyfriend Jack Dunphy. One can palpably sense the tension in this circle of three writers who vascillate between rooting for each other and feeling jealous of each one's successes.
Like last year's Kinsey, Capote does a fine job recreating both real-life characters and period details without hitting audiences over the head with "Look! this is the 1950s!" fakery - striking the right subtle, muted notes, while also dimensionalizing the people, warts and all, bravely. Where it actually surpasses Kinsey is in how focused it is- by having this one important period in Truman Capote's history to really hone in on, it manages actually to paint a pretty accurate composite of the man's entire life.
Despite the tragic central story - of the murders that became In Cold Blood - here's much humor throughout, appropos to Capote's wit, of course. But one is ultimately left with a feeling of sadness just as the writing of that book burdened Capote himself with insurmountable feelings of remorse and one of the worst cases of writer's block imaginable. Of course, Capote was the one who once said, "Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it."
I'm impressed by the film's careful pacing, the crisp cinematography and Miller's way with the actors (or perhaps just knowing enough to cast it perfectly and let them be). It all comes together into what has to be one of the year's better films. Still, I worry about overrating it or Hoffman's performance, so perhaps you should forget both this review and all the others and just go in with open mind and heart.
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