Infamous
takes Truman Capote for another spin.
Douglas McGrath must have the charm of legendary socialite Truman Capote to seduce stars like Sandra Bullock and Isabella Rossellini into his new flick
Infamous
. Sadly, he lacks the narrative mastery of his subject.
Set in New York City and Kansas,
Infamous
is ostensibly about the author's struggle to write his most famous work,
In Cold Blood
. In reality,
Infamous
can't get comfortable and flip-flops between
plot points, leaving a weak string of romanticized incidents in its
wake.
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Known for his humor and incomparable wit, Capote (Toby Jones) made a cozy home for himself nestled among the rich and famous. The glittering world of New York City society was Capote's playground. He was an honorary member of the ladies who lunch, unapologetically draped in fur-trimmed coats with excessively long scarves strewn around his slight neck.
McGrath's stylish depiction of this '50s high-society city life would have been beautifully suited to a film about the creation of one of Capote's other works-say,
Breakfast at Tiffany's
(which would have offered a look at a different time in Capote's life, rather than the same one as last year's
Capote
).
Capote's insatiable love of gossip is titillated by the brutal murder of a farming family in Kansas. He becomes fascinated by thoughts of suspicion and fear tearing the Kansas townsfolk to pieces. With his "oldest and dearest friend," Nelle Harper Lee (played headily and convincingly by Bullock), in tow, he heads to the caviar-forsaken streets of Holcomb to write a piece for the New Yorker.
But the two worlds of
Infamous
do not convincingly intersect. After Capote is accused by one of the killers of lacking kindness and selfishly dehumanizing his "characters," Capote, shaken, returns to NYC. There, one
of his society mamas, Babe Paley (Sigourney Weaver), painfully
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recounts how she discovered her husband is cheating. Gripped by a previously unseen bout of compassion, he professes his undying friendship, making his support available to her 24 hours a day, "even if a war broke out between Manhattan and the Bronx." The act appears to mark a change in Capote, one desperately needed to illustrate the effect writing
In Cold Blood
is actually having on the author. Yet in the next scene, he insensitively turns around and tells "Big Mama" Slim Keith (Hope Davis) all about Babe's private struggle. The act is puzzling, cheapening the significance of his Kansas experiences while signifying Capote's insatiable need to be the center of attention by any means available.
For Capote, the tough lesson that people are not playthings comes through an infatuation with the "artistic" murderer Perry, played as a Brando-esque beefcake by the next James Bond, Daniel Craig. Perry is as mythical in proportions as the socialite played by Rossellini, too gorgeous to be believed and unmarred by any act, even murder. In Perry, Capote's hunger for intrigue finds its match. He turns himself inside out to get close to the "tender and terrible" convict, only to realize the cost when it's too late.
Toby Jones is a success as the complex and eccentric Capote, exhibiting a keen strength and melancholy humor, the tears in his eyes believable even when affected for Capote's personal gain. He was a writer who lived comfortably in high society, yet managed to infiltrate a completely foreign culture and write a seminal piece of literature. We've heard this story before, but
Infamous
doesn't quite make the pieces fit.
