Capote (2005)

Premise: Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) follows a story about the murders of a family of four in a small Kansas town with his research assistant, Harper Lee (Catherine Keener). He develops a particularly close relationship with one of the killers, Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.).

To quote one lady I heard in passing, "It's a psychological thriller. It's brilliant. And it's about writers."

Is it ever. I'm just finishing up Robert S. Boynton's The New New Journalism, and it informed my interpretation of this film. The book is an interview series with those he feels are the best representatives of what he calls the new new journalism. Each interviewee is asked nearly identical questions, from their body of work to the types of pens they prefer. I'm a whore for detail, obsessed with not how things work but how people work them. Each writer faces the same problem: how to justify an unethical career.

You always betray your subject and often yourself in order to tell a story. Even more so, you often exploit the suffering of others for your personal profit. This issue, I believe, is at the heart of Capote.

How Hoffman managed to transform his gravelly voice and bulking frame into Capote's effete body and lithe mannerisms, I will never know. He's gone - just gone. Disappeared into a role so wholly consuming I'm surprised we got him back. It was something his chameleon qualities, if you can imagine, only previously hinted. Beyond that, to take this role on . . . bold, ballsy choice. Capote, in his fawn coat and sweeping scarf, stands out against the plain landscape and offends the detective working the case (Chris Cooper). A glint in his eye, and the next day he appears in dark suit and tie. Mimicry and subtle manipulation.

Collins Jr. infuses Smith with many of the same qualities, a shadow of the master. Even Capote notes their similarities, remarking, "It's as if Perry and I grew up in the same house. And one day he went out the back door and I went out the front." A twist of fate saved him from Smith's eminent fate.

By the time Smith and Capote have their inevitable stand off (a quiet iteration of questions, the former demanding the title of the book and the latter needing the requisite details of that night in order to finish said book), it's infused with more tension than any time Jack bellowed for someone to TELL HIM WHERE THE BOMB IS. The results are devastating. Capote's manipulation of Smith is so complete that you've all but forgotten who the real villain is. When Smith describes the first shock of violence, you sputter as though your throat was slit.

Ballsy work on the parts of sophomore director Bennett Miller and screen adapter Dan Futtermen. And, as further proof of Miller, Futtermen, and Hoffman's beautiful symmetry together, they even managed to make me feel a bit sympathetic for Capote at the end. To realize the role he played in the deaths of Smith and Richard Hickock (Mark Pellegrino), to discover that the one thing that he believed separated them he had unwittingly destroyed must have been terrible. Devastating, even. A+

P.S. A very special shout out goes to Amy for telling which trailer I had heard that song in. Good work, my friend.

P.P.S. Evghenis, check out this year's Movie Club. They address many of the same questions you often ask me.