Capote

Review By: Freddie LaFemina
FreddieLaFemina@TheCinemaSource.com

Are they going to give this guy the Oscar or what? I’m sure that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Golden Globe is looking awfully lonely up on his mantle, but it is unlikely that the Academy will lend a hand to Hoffman in his quest for aesthetic symmetry. It isn’t for lack of talent or craftsmanship – Hoffman’s performance as Truman Capote is truly breathtaking, but my feeling is that Heath is going to get the nod this year. After all, the Academy owes Ledger big after overlooking his previous top performances not once (10 Things I Hate About You) but twice (The Patriot) in 1999 and 2000, respectively. It’s just a shame that two films that would have otherwise cleaned house in other years will have to duke it out and split the spoils on March 5.

Say what you will about the recent popularity of the biopic in the Academy (4 of 5 Best Actor nominees last year, including the winner (Jamie Foxx) and 3 of 5 this year) – despite its depiction of true events, Capote cannot be pigeonholed as a simple biography. True, it is appropriately titled – the film is all about Truman Capote, not the murders, not the murderers, and not his colleagues. Capote is the story of a brilliant, self-absorbed, and manipulative though unexpectedly compassionate man’s turbulent effort to write his magnum opus.

The film begins on November 15, 1959. A young girl enters an unadorned rural home and finds a brutally murdered body in an upstairs bedroom. Cut to an extreme long shot of the desolate prairie landscape, with the trees lined up along the horizon as if on a stage, the cold, gray canvas upon which much of the film will unfold. The camera dwells longer than we might expect, but this will shot come to embody the film’s visual style – slow yet deliberate, patient yet tense. We are soon introduced to Truman, who we quickly assess as a flamboyant storyteller and the perpetual center of attention, at a Manhattan party. The morning after, Truman reads about the Kansas murders in the New York Times and is instantly fascinated by the barbarous act.

Almost immediately, Truman is en route to Kansas with his friend and fellow writer Harper Lee (played by Catherine Keener), to write a story for the New Yorker about the effects of the murders on the surrounding town. We are immediately suspicious of Hoffman’s Truman, as he pays off a train attendant to compliment him on his latest book in front of his companion. Lee astutely calls Truman out on his scheme. Though few actors in the film are allowed much space to work given the Hoffman’s constant and dominant presence, Keener’s subtle portrayal of Lee as Truman’s conscience is marvelous, and it is she who inevitably provides the most on-the-ball appraisal of Truman in an unforgettable ...