REVIEWED - CAPOTE: Capote is a stunning examination of creative brilliance in all its cerebral - and cold-blooded - glory, writes Michael Dwyer
IN 1967, within a year of its publication, Truman Capote's innovative non-fiction novel In Cold Blood had taken on the status of a modern literary classic and was turned into an arresting black-and-white screen drama by Richard Brooks. Now the making of that book has become the subject of an even more deeply involving movie in Capote, a remarkable collaboration primarily between three men born in the year after the book was published: screenwriter Dan Futterman, director Bennett Miller, and actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.
In a meticulous performance that has secured him a long overdue Oscar nomination, Hoffman nails the fey, affected voice of Capote and the author's narcissism, flamboyance and ingratiating nature with subtle precision in a fascinating film that, despite its title, is not strictly a biopic but proves just as, and arguably even more, revealing.
It begins in November 1959, when Capote reads a report on a rural Kansas robbery that resulted in the cold-blooded murder of a family of four, and impulsively decides to delve into the story as his next feature for the New Yorker. Temporarily abandoning the Manhattan social circuit where he revels in preening as the centre of attention, Capote travels to Kansas with his confidante and sounding board, fellow writer Nelle Harper Lee (Catherine Keener).
When the Truman show comes to town, the author appears decidedly out of place, with his mannered behaviour, ankle-length overcoat and long, hanging scarf. It is Lee who eases the way for Capote into the Kansas community, where his celebrated Breakfast at Tiffany's is banned at the local library.
After the two murderers are captured in Las Vegas and jailed in Kansas, the story takes another turn and builds into something far more complicated and substantial, as Capote finds himself irresistibly drawn to one of the killers, Perry Smith (played by the underestimated Clifton Collins Jr).
The droll, acerbic epigrams coined and delivered by Capote provide the only flashes of light relief in director Miller's auspicious first feature film, which is scripted and treated with a bracing intelligence that matches its subject. It is grounded in human frailty as Capote and Smith, the celebrated author and the convicted killer, connect as outsiders from troubled backgrounds, and as Capote is forced to juggle his unbridled self-absorption, his unrequited love for Smith and his ultimately sly exploitation of the killer and his fate.
Working from Gerald Clarke's definitive 1988 biography of Capote, screenwriter Futterman shapes a cool, contemplative and acutely observant reflection on the creative process, as what started as a magazine story takes five years and grows into the volume that is In Cold Blood. Over the same period, Harper Lee's own novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, is published and filmed before Capote's quest reaches its chilling resolution.
