Capote

Genre: biographical drama

With: Philip Seymour Hoffman (Truman Capote), Catherine Keener (Nelle Harper Lee), Clifton Collins Jr. (Perry Smith), Chris Cooper (Alvin Dewey), Bruce Greenwood (Jack Dunphy), Bob Balaban (William Shawn), Amy Ryan (Marie Dewey), Mark Pellegrino (Richard Dick Ricardo Hickock)

Director: Bennett Miller

Screenplay: Dan Futterman (based on Gerald Clarke’s book)

Release: 2005

Studio: United Artists, Sony Pictures Classics et al.

Rating: 14A

MBiS score: 8.4/10

A Capote Double Bill –  

‟More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.” 

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Story-line: New York, 1959. When he learns of the brutal murder of the Clutter family in Kansas, Truman Capote decides to write about it for the New Yorker. Without delay, he hops on a train to the Sunflower State with Nelle Harper Lee, his childhood friend, who will act as a ‟research assistant and bodyguard”.   

Pluses: Philip Seymour Hoffman's Oscar-winning turn as the multi-faceted and flawed Capote, fine support from Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper and Amy Ryan, an intellectually stimulating screenplay that offers glimpses of literary work but no clear-cut answers, unshowy direction, beautiful cinematography, a superb rendering of the late 1950s and Mychael Danna's quiet musical score. 

Minuses: none really.

Comments: although a bit cold, slow and static, CAPOTE maintains interest from beginning to end because of the tension exerted on its protagonists by a murky and morally difficult situation. Capote, who had undertaken his Kansas assignment rather lightheartedly, faced a life-changing challenge as a person and a writer. Was he exploiting a tragedy and glorifying a crime for the sake of a book... which became one of America's most celebrated novels? Or did he allow himself to be manipulated by Smith and Hickock, the two men charged with the crime? These questions, combined with issues of trust, prejudice, love and clashing personalities are at the heart of this stimulating film that dovetails with the worthy DEAD MAN WALKING, another grave drama about criminal behaviour, justice and redemption.  

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