Capote

[godardian]

You know what's funny to me about Capote? I remember Dan Futterman solely as an actor, and solely from the initriguing but iffy and overall mediocre Urbania, and in his guest spot as "Barry" (the frumpy, newly out guy that Will and Jack have to make over) on Will & Grace. Now he's an Academy Award-winning screenwriter!

I thought Capote was an excellent film that included an excellent PSH performance, not just another excellent performance surrounded by a relatively blah movie (I'm thinking of Monster, specifically).

[RegularKarate]

I guess you can't like em all. This movie didn't do it for me. But my two friends agreed.

i'm a little confused by the word "But" in that last sentence. i don't think it needs to be there, unless you meant to write "But my two friends disagreed."

does anyone else agree?

I don't, BUT my friends don't

[Gold Trumpet]

This film was an absolute misfire. A tragedy of misguided storyteliing. The fractured faults gave it no chance to survive in my eyes.

There are two halves to this film. The first is the introduction of Truman Capote, a large figure of such prominent literary personality that the film can roll out personal quips along with historical ones. (his relation to Harper Lee at the time of her famous publication, for example) It is hardly even the true introduction of a character. One need only watch the numerous talk shows he appeared on to find the entertaining personality and enthusiastic man just replicated here on screen. The only way this introduction was able to be made is because the pubic today is so removed from the days of his personality as instantly recognizable that a re-introduction was in order. The second half of the film is the delving to a plot/theme. The only thing wrong with this is that it just the transplantation of a theme from In Cold Blood to movie screen. Those who have not read the book just need to come here.

This film is second hand material. Its main parts are only relevant because of how dislodged we are to the book at hand and the personality that was once recognizable. The one theme the film did have going for it was hardly given enough attention. The relationship of Truman Capote to the inmate he befriends but who he is also using to write the book. There is also an indentification Truman Capote has with him. Capote is too distraught to get close to him. How could Truman Capote identify with him? Why is he too distraught to truly be near him? We walk with Capote through the torment of witnessing these men doomed to die. We also just did that in the book as well. The answers to my questions were given lip service yet they are the questions that could make this film wholly unique in conjecture to the larger identity it replicates on screen.

Yet, the film is beautifully made. Certain images of Kansas in this film stayed with me like images written by Capote did with In Cold Blood. Philip Seymour Hoffmann displaces mimicry and ends up giving his performance of Truman Capote an identity that can be believed in. Clifton Collins Jr, who I liked in Tigerland, is even better here.

[Redlum]

Sorry, GT, I dont understand. Are you saying that the film should have been made with the prerequisite of the audience having read the book?

[Gold Trumpet]

Sorry, GT, I dont understand. Are you saying that the film should have been made with the prerequisite of the audience having read the book?

I'm saying it should have been made with the idea to it should have its own identity and not be second hand material to two aspects of Capote's life - his obvious personality and In Cold Blood.

[Split Infinitive]

My thoughts on Capote (i.e. the rough draft of my review)...

Like Christ being tempted to turn stones into bread after forty days and forty nights of fasting in the wilderness, we find Truman Capote seized by inspiration by the cold-blooded murder of a wealthy Midwestern family, the raw material of humble stones looking like choice morsels to be transformed at the touch of his pen.

But it would be a mistake to see Truman as a Savior. Rather, he appears in "Capote" as a master of deceit and manipulation, clever enough to get exactly what he needs; pathetic enough to appear the victim in distress. Or is that also a charade? You never know how far Capote is willing to go until he takes that next step.

Dan Futterman's screenplay is as deceptively sharp as its main character. Instead of telling the story of "In Cold Blood" through Capote's eyes, the story is about Capote's writing of the story and how the creation of his book impacted the lives of the people included in its pages. Capote broke every rule of journalistic and writerly ethics in his obsessive search for the perfect nonfiction narrative. Bribing the local townspeople of Holcomb, Kansas; hiring a great defense lawyer for Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.) and Richard Hickock (Mark Pellegrino), the transients who shotgunned the family in the search for a rumored stash of wealth; befriending Smith to wring every last detail of the night of the crime out of him before the creaky wheels of justice carry Smith to the end of a short rope and long drop. One of the film's earliest scenes tells us everything we need to know about Capote as he relates to a witness from whom he needs information a story of being an outsider as a child, misunderstood by everyone and always wanting to prove them wrong. He gets his information and the audience learns two things: One, that Capote can get people to do whatever he wants and two, that everything is all about him.

Bennett Miller sets the scene for Perry Smith and Truman Capote's entanglement with a deft hand. The visual architecture of the film is angular, almost static and muted. There is a claustrophobia shared by the open plains of Kansas and the jutting skyscrapers of New York. It's a feeling shared by Capote when he meets his most unlikely kindred spirit in Smith. Capote says something like, "It's like we both grew up in the same house. And then one day, he got up and went out the back door and I went out the front." Both men have sensitive souls, poets' souls; both were abandoned by family; both struggle to be taken seriously. By some twist, Capote wound up a critical darling of the East Coast literati while Smith eked by as a drifter. Futterman's script draws a disquieting parallel between Smith's almost inexplicable need to murder the family that fears what he's capable of and Capote's need to see Smith (and Hickock) hang for the sake of a good ending to his book—and, perhaps, because it would silence the screaming in the mirror that Capote sees every time he looks into Smith's eyes.

While Smith's mercenary act leads to his death over a paltry sum, Capote becomes the most famous writer in America. Miller's austere style provides the audience an insulation between it and sensationalism that Capote manipulates into his book, which sort of misses the point. People don't read true crime novels to be shielded from the pulp nonfiction. Only in two scenes does Miller cross the line with Truman: Once in the funeral parlor when Capote looks inside the caskets and once near the end when we see the graphic violence of the murders. In the funeral parlor, we see Capote's reaction and later hear his descriptive passage from "In Cold Blood" of the heads wrapped in gauze. It wasn't necessary to show us, to transgress the privacy of the dead. Similarly, Smith's narration of the awful night in 1959 when he blew the faces off four innocent people didn't need to be shown—but we are. We're shown because that's what Capote would show. It's inconsistent with the perspective established throughout the film, because though Capote is central to the story, we are observing him, not empathizing. If Miller and Futterman's goal was to circumvent the exploitative nature of the "true crime" genre, their success falters only temporarily.

Writers should appreciate "Capote" even more than non-writers, for the psychological complexity and thematic sophistication is only heightened by an uncomfortable self-recognition in Truman's tactics. He crosses lines that we writers only imagine. In tackling nonfiction subjects, how often have I not wished that things could turn out just so for that perfect ending? Or that I could hammer at an interviewee until getting just the answer I need? And why lie about the fact that on some level, even the most altruistic story may be written in some service to the ego?

In this, "Capote" realizes the destructive impulse in creation, the deliberate construction with the raw material of human tragedy. "Capote" deconstructs the creative act to the primal impulse of self-advancement at the expense of others. Driving the film are a trio of doyens, breathing human flesh to the mirror: Hoffman, in the role that will win him the Oscar; Catherine Keener, the compassionate conscience of the film, as Nell Harper Lee (yes, that one); Collins, whose soulful Perry Smith is so much the opposite of Hoffman's feline, obsessive Capote that they cannot help but be shadows of the dual nature of any man who has ever wanted to be more than he is and found himself wanting. The irony is that the convicted murderer is left with more semblance of humanity than the chronicler who has lost himself in search of the greatest American tragedy ever told. He told it, then lived it for the rest of his life.

[Gold Trumpet]

good review, Matt. I obviously disagree as much as humanely possible but I'm estatic it was an excellent review anyways. Yes folks, I brought this guy to xixax.

[Split Infinitive]

good review, Matt. I obviously disagree as much as humanely possible but I'm estatic it was an excellent review anyways. Yes folks, I brought this guy to xixax.

Thank you.  I'm flattered that you think enough of me to take credit for my presence.  

I think our main point of disagreement is over the coincidence of the film to the true story.  For me, it wasn't as important that it was based on real events; the movie was about the process and what it tells us about Capote finding his doppleganger (or is it Smith who finds his?)  If taken as a film based on actual events, it certainly falls in line with the typical, rote biopic story arc -- no argument there.  But it's very much focused on how this character fits into the landscape of creation in American art, so I found it fascinating.  Capote's torment at the end was interesting to me because it wasn't just about the men dying -- it was about being forced into letting them die because he had to kill that part of himself.  I think the torment derived more from recognizing himself for what he was rather than what was about to happen to the man he'd befriended (and I use the term loosely).

Collins was fantastic, though, wasn't he?  And with an underwritten role.  Strangely, the last thing I saw him in was Mindhunters (not exactly recommended), and I remember thinking that this guy needs to get better roles in better movies.  Lo and behold, the movie gods answered my prayers.

[modage]

Yes folks, I brought this guy to xixax.

i KNEW it! i was going to say after reading that, you guys will be fast friends regardless of your tastes.  looks like the 'real world' beat me to it.

[md]

Two nice reads on the great PSH

http://www.rochesterinsider.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060203/INSIDER04/602030342

http://www.rochesterinsider.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060203/INSIDER03/602030345

[MacGuffin]

These new post-nomination tv spots are ridiculous.  They make it sound like some kind of intense thriller... the music is so incredibly over the top.

In the same vein, the recent Oscar print ads for Munich use the photo below...



...making the film look like Ocean's 13.

[The Red Vine]

That actually came to my mind while watching "Munich".

As for "Capote", my town didn't even give it a chance. It played for only one week, at only a 10 PM showing, at only one theater. And yet they put "When a Stranger Calls" on two screens in the same theater. So I went to the 10:00 showing the night it opened and it was packed. Apparently I wasn't the only one that wanted to see it.

PSH was the best thing in the movie by a long shot. The movie itself wasn't bad, but it wasn't quite the knockout I was expecting. I'm really hoping PSH will get best actor. It's about time he gets the respect he deserves.

[SiliasRuby]

PSH Deserves Best actor this year, woo, what a performance. my expectations were met and they were put to shame as everything in this movie sparkled greatness.

[MacGuffin]

Anyone know why Paul Thomas Anderson received a Special Thanks in the end credits?

[MacGuffin]

'Immortalist' finds home at Vantage

Paramount Vantage is getting into the Bennett Miller business. The indie unit, along with producer Plan B, will develop Miller's latest project, "The Immortalist." The project, which has yet to be written, is a "character-driven drama set in the emerging world of life extension." Details of the plot are still under wraps, but Miller describes it as "not a science fiction film ... (but) a drama set in the very real world of those pursuing biological immortality." He adds: "It's a pursuit that attracts some extremely brilliant, wealthy and influential people. It also attracts tragic figures. This story follows one such person on his disturbing foray into it."