Capote biopic dwells on New Yorker author's darker side.
***image1***There's a moment in
Capote
in which its subject, author Truman Capote, says in his insidiously pitched contralto, "I don't care one way or another if we catch whoever did this." He's speaking to the sheriff of the Kansas country where the four horrific murders later described by Capote in his "nonfiction novel"
In Cold Blood
took place. Chris Cooper, who plays Sheriff Alvin Dewey, looks at Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) without expression. "Well, I care," he eventually says flatly. And a space opens up between us, the audience, and the writer-a space in which the troika of director Bennett Miller, writer Dan Futterman and Hoffman make it possible for us to see that the title
In Cold Blood
doesn't just refer to the two murderers.
In November of 1959, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock broke into a farmhouse where they'd been told $10,000 was hidden. Finding only about $50, they shot the four family members and fled. Meanwhile an avid Capote, searching for an article idea, came across the story in the newspaper and convinced New Yorker editor William Shawn (Bob Balaban) to pay for a trip to the Midwest for himself and friend Harper Lee (Catherine Keener, always wonderful but here outstanding). The real-life Capote said later that if he'd known what a toll the experience would take on him, he wouldn't have gotten off the train in Kansas but kept going. As it is we're left with a remarkable document-though there's no doubt the strain of befriending the two murderers hastened Capote's death by alcoholism. He plays Smith (a darkly inarticulate Clifton Collins, Jr. ) like a Bösendorfer to extract the information he wants, knowing just when to push, just when to make himself desirably scarce. But the price he pays is the horrendous obligation of visiting and assisting the men right up until the very moment of their executions.
***image2***In every scene for which we're given a reason to like the admittedly witty, sensitive Capote, we're also given a reason to mistrust him, to see him as not only fey and coy but also almost purely careerist and capable of unblinking dishonesty. He befriends Smith only because he's seeking the most expedient path to a bestselling book-but at the same time, we begin to suspect his intentions aren't malicious when he buys baby food and spoons it into the mouth of the hunger-striking Smith, telling him softly, "It's okay, it's your friend Truman." When Lee asks him if he actually holds Smith in any esteem, Capote blusters in reply, "He's a goldmine!" Yet his own ruthless ability to work that vein horrifies him even as he does it.
That the film permits, even invites, this level of psychological inquiry is a testament to its script, some quiet but admirable cinematography (I'm sure Leavenworth has never been photographed so lovingly) and the personal investment of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who co-produced. He's not so much playing Capote as he is reincarnating him. When Capote views the bodies of the slain family, Hoffman captures just the right mixture of voyeurism and awe; as Capote later says, "It comforts me, to find it so horrifying-it's a relief." To peg him as completely prurient and self-serving would be as reductionistic as to see Smith as evil; Capote also is the only person who has the patience to sit with this "criminally violent" man until his defenses dissolve into humanity. Such structured, complicated ambiguity is the gift of
In Cold Blood
, delicately terrifying-and the same is offered by
Capote
, for those who have the desire to take it.
