Rita recommends…Capote

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Capote (2005), aka the writer, Truman Capote, covers a very short time in the writer’s life, a span of six years, when he decides to do research into the 1959 murders of the Cultler family. He reads about the brutal murders in the
New York Times and is hooked. He calls his editor at The New Yorker and informs him of his decision to write a feature on this gruesome story. He brings his good friend, Nelle Harper Lee (Author of “Kill a Mockingbird”) as his assistant and emissary to try to connect with the local people of Holcomb, Kansas (pop. 308). Capote’s feature article on how the murders affect the small town turns into a six-year odyssey that would mark the pinnacle of his writing career and his ultimate undoing.

Capote does not hide his effeminate manners and as such, no one in the town wants to talk to him. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays him so artfully and captures Capote’s complexity; it is riveting performance. He has Capote’s mannerisms down cold but instead of playing him as caricature, (which would have been easy for an actor of lessor ability to do) he expertly captures Capote’s absolute steadfastness and total immersion in his subjects. Regardless of how much disdain is reflected in the face of the chief of police and his underlings, one marvels at how Capote gets access to his subjects, namely, one of the accused killers, Perry Smith. It is a testament to his writer’s tenacity; he is absolutely wedded to his obsession. He seems to become enamored with Smith (Clifton Collins Jr. ) and the interviews between them in the jail cell are a bizarre dance of the erotic and exploitation.

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Tags: Harper Lee, Truman Capote