Capote
First things first: Philip Seymour Hoffman is nothing short of remarkable as Truman Capote. Often when portraying famous historical figures of the 20th century—real people who were captured on film and television for all to see—actors get caught up in mimicry and forget the person they're depicting had real depth and color. As we marvel at their ability to look and sound like their subject, we fail to notice the fact that their performance is just a portrait, not a living, breathing study of a character. As Capote, Hoffman transcends that tendency in a way no other actor has before. He not only looks and sounds like Capote, he is Capote—at least the Capote as written in the screenplay. Hoffman captures the author's vanity, obsessive ambition and thirst for fame and surrounds it with the voice, postures and mannerisms of his subject. When the love of his own legend collides with the friendship Perry Smith (one of the killers in his book, In Cold Blood) thinks they have developed, Hoffman's performance perfectly captures the extraordinary emotional weight of the moral dilemma Mr. Capote tries to but can't ignore.
Hoffman is so brilliant it's easy to overlook how good the rest of the film is. Bennett Miller makes an incredibly strong feature film debut, paying close attention to detail—from recreating early 1960s Kansas and New York to casting the perceptive Clifton Collins Jr., whose shy, resolved performance as Smith is the perfect counterbalance to Capote's manipulative ego. Collins even looks like a young Robert Blake, who played Smith in the beautifully photographed 1967 adaptation of In Cold Blood. It seems cinematographer Adam Kimmel clearly had Conrad Hall's work from that film in mind while shooting Capote; he and Miller succeed in creating a similar starkness to the landscape, limiting their color palette to much the same effect of a black and white film. (Of course, nothing eclipses the genius of Hall's use of rain on the window in Smith's jail cell. If you haven't seen In Cold Blood, it's worth it just for the image from that scene.)
Miller's direction is simple: lots of long shots, long takes and a very still camera make for a refreshingly thoughtful narrative in this era of short-attention-span theater. That he probably didn't have to do much direction of his talented cast, including the always exceptional Chris Cooper and Catherine Keener, no doubt helped things stay focused on the film's strength. Capote is not a biopic, but a gracefully acted and carefully crafted examination of how one man's ambition can wreak havoc on those around him and, ultimately, on himself. Frankly, it should have won the Oscar for Best Picture of 2005.
- July 7, 2006
DVD Extras
Two audio commentaries, one from Hoffman and Miller and another by Miller and Kimmel; an interesting, yet brief featurette about Truman Capote, featuring biographer Gerald Clarke (on whose book the film is based) and archival footage of Capote himself; and a much longer and slightly less interesting "making of" documentary about converting Winnipeg and its surrounding countryside into early 1960s Kansas.