Capote Review
by Jun Yan (JunYanPharmD AT gmail DOT com)October 24th, 2005
Capote (2005)
When I first read "In Cold Blood," a disturbing astonishment that stayed with me until this day was the improbable objectiveness and cool in the author's portrayal of not only the crime, but also the criminals, Richard Hiccock and Perry Smith. Truman Capote described both with a merciless realism without a hint of his personal judgment. Even the hint of sympathy for Smith's miserable life was countered with a chilling reconstruction of the gruesome and senseless crime. Unlike the vast majority of nonfiction works that was profoundly influenced by this book, I could detect no trace of the author's own opinion or moral stand.
After watching the biographical movie Capote, I finally understood.
And the reverse is also true: One must read In Cold Blood to fully appreciate the biographical movie Capote. What drew a rising star on the New York literary circle, the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's, to a piece of news about a multiple murder in rural Kansas? Why did he use every trick in his bag to induce Hiccock and Smith to confess not only exactly how they blasted the heads of the farmer, his wife, and their two children, but also the innermost secrets of their lives and psyche? And, most important, how did writing this book exhausted every last bit of Capote's being?
The fascination of watching an inevitable train wreck that one may experience reading "In Cold Blood" is exactly the same reason one could not help being absorbed by this movie's account of the psychological destruction of Capote. It is a fatalistic tragedy that Capote himself anticipated but was powerless to reverse. To finish this book, he probed and manipulated a number of people, especially Perry Smith, with whom he felt a particularly powerful kinship and probably fell in love. He gained and used the trust of Smith and Hiccock because he needed materials for the book. He got them a lawyer so that they lived long enough to supply the materials. And he watched them hang so that the book would have a perfect ending.
The movie was as ruthless and cool in describing Capote's own motives and conduct as Capote himself was in writing In Cold Blood. Like the portrayal of Smith in the book, Capote in the movie is simultaneously despicable and sympathetic. His calculation, manipulation, and betrayal of various people, especially Smith, was almost a duty he could not escape, not necessarily because of his pursuit of fame and adoration as implied by the movie. I am convinced that he would have sold his soul to the devil all the same even if he were to die the moment he finished the book. He did it because he knew the brilliance of the book that he was writing; he knew he was holding in his hand true greatness and perhaps even immortality. As a writer of talent and insight, he could not have let that go for anything, including a slight problem with his own conscience or the erosion of his humanity.
And a conscience he did have, or he wouldn't have been eaten up by using and lying to Smith. In a country that full of people who are absolutely convinced of their own righteousness and have no qualm with condemning others with zealot, Capote could have considered his use of the murderers as necessary and justified, and that Hiccock and Smith deserved having their confidence betrayed, which at most was a minor infraction compared with their crime. But Capote could not justify it to himself. If he could, In Cold Blood would not have been so powerful and disturbing. And he could not forgive himself also because of the feelings he had with Smith.
When his childhood friend Nell Harper Lee (Katherine Keener) asked Capote whether he fell in love with Perry Smith, he did not answer yes or no, but said, "It's as if we grew up in the same household. One day he got up and left through the back door, and I left through the front door." Even if there were sexual attraction to Smith, such a sense of identification would be more powerful to Capote than mere love. In Smith he saw an alternative fate of himself that was not inconceivable. Even a book as objective and relentless as In Cold Blood, seemingly without a trace of the author's own viewpoint, carried a form of self-expression.
Some movies thrive on brilliant performances from an ensemble cast. This is not one of them. The subdued competence of the supporting actors was necessary and essential for the movie to be effective, because the revelation of Capote must dominate the story, which hinges on Phillip Seymour Hoffman's acting. And does he deliver. There is a psychological truth to his performance beyond the impeccable imitation of Capote's voice and mannerism. One sees the conflicts and contradictions, torment and ambition, repulsion and fascination, self-absorption and self-disgust, and the capability of empathy and greatness bubbling underneath a flamboyant, almost caricatured exterior. It is an example of what a gifted actor can achieve once he is given a degree of artistic freedom and control.
A slight insufficiency in the movie is Capote's own childhood scars. Perhaps the writer Dan Futterman and director Bennett Miller thought fragments dropped here and there by Capote himself to win a stranger's confidence were sufficient and would rather focus on In Cold Blood. However, giving a clearer history of Capote's psychological makeup would have added depth and resonance to his complexity.
Grade: A.
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