The Truman Show

On a bleak, snowy day like today, seeing Capote was the perfect thing to do. Andrea and I met in Brooklyn Heights to see the afternoon showing. After the movie we walked 2 blocks to 70 Willow Street and stood in front of the house where Capote lived with his lover Jack Dunphy and wrote his famous book In Cold Blood. Before seeing the movie, I wondered why an aesthete such as Capote would leave the urbanity of Brooklyn for the sparse Great Plains to write about the seemingly inconsequential murder of a Kansas family, but now I understand completely what motivated the eccentric author.

I had not read the reviews of the movie beforehand, as I typically don't, but I knew the critics have been touting it as Oscar material. It's easy to see why. Capote is not your typical biopic. It doesn't trace Capote's life from cradle to grave or plumb the depths of his sexuality. Instead, the subtle screenplay by Dan Futterman (of The Birdcage and Will and Grace) starts with Capote, sitting in his study in Brooklyn in 1959, reading in the New York Times of the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. His fascination with the circumstances of the murder, a typical Midwestern family obliterated suddenly by two criminals from the underbelly of society, leads Capote to Kansas and to a personal relationship with the killers that continues until their execution by hanging 6 years later. Capote's invention of a new genre--the nonfiction novel--was perfected in his masterpiece In Cold Blood.

In Cold Blood has always been one of my favorite books. I've read it twice and after seeing the movie plan to read it again. It's one of those rare pieces of literature that transcend its subject, mainly because of the way the subject is treated. Despite their brutal crime, the killers are portrayed as human beings rather than animals. The book is not so much a report as it is a long poem.

Capoteis graced by superb performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman as the eponymous character and Catherine Keener as his best friend and conscience Harper Lee (author of the equally wonderful To Kill A Mockingbird). Hoffman's embodiment of the late Capote is complete. It's easy to understand why Capote had became such a tragic figure by the 1970s. His obsession and infatuation with the smoldering killer Perry Smith (played by Clifton Collins, Jr.) fed Capote's voracious hunger to write the perfect book and achieve fame and wealth. But when he set out to get the story, Capote hadn't counted on one thing: falling in love with his subject.

A series of riveting prison scenes shows how the relationship between Capote and Smith develops. To gain Smith's trust, Capote appeals to the common upbringing of the two men: abandoned, unwanted, outcast. He penetrates Smith's psyche, learning what makes him tick. He gets Smith to let him read his private journals. He arranges for an appeal, which results in the first stay of execution of the two men. Capote is relieved to have the extra time to get to know his subjects. But as time passes, Capote gets in a little too deep, and the line between his compassion for the killers and his compulsion to write the perfect story begins to blur.

Capote writes three-quarters of his book before realizing that he can't finish it until he knows the ending, which, of course, must be the hanging of the two men. A series of stays of execution over the next several years is more than Capote bargains for, and the prolonged agony of his lingering infatuation and his inability to finish his work nearly drives him to a breakdown. Nicely contrasted is Capote's stable relationship with writer Jack Dunphy, who at times seems spurned but nonetheless supports him through it all.

Capote is as fascinating and compelling a story as the one that made Truman Capote a household name. Capote hunts his story with a fervor that will later destroy him, and he will never finish another novel. Not that he ever needed to.