In the type of acting tour de la force that everybody loves unless they’re some kind of a dick, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Truman Capote, the famous writer and weirdo. Although the use of only his last name as the movie’s title seems to imply that it will tell the entire story of his life and maybe even the entire story of the life of everybody with the last name Capote, this is actually not a full on biography. The story is narrowed down to the 4 or 5 years when he was working on his famous book IN COLD BLOOD, starring Robert Blake.
The movie starts out with a young girl discovering the dead bodies of a family murdered in a farmhouse. And before you know it Capote and his research assistant Harper Lee (author of the book TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, starring Gregory Peck) are nosing around asking everybody questions. So at first I thought this was gonna be kind of a LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN thing with famous authors going around solving crimes. I bet the Marquis De Sade did these murders. Or Edgar Alan Poe.
Actually no, it’s the making of IN COLD BLOOD and the uncomfortable relationships and questions it brings up. At first Capote comes into this town and you think everybody’s gonna hate him. Even if he wasn’t such an eccentric sissy, he’s sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. You can’t help but feel a little queasy when he goes to the school and tries to talk to the poor girl that found the dead bodies, like he’s her buddy. But before you know it the girl’s giving him her diaries, he’s eating dinner at the chief of police’s house, and everybody in town wants to hear his stories about Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe. It’s uncomfortable because you know Capote is just using these people to get information for his New Yorker article (which later grows into a book). (more…)
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