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PLOT: Author Truman Capote travels to Kansas to interview the people affected by a multiple murder -- and begins manipulating, charming and deceiving his way towards his magnum opus, In Cold Blood.
Much has been written about the transcendent -- and certainly Oscar-worthy -- job Philip Seymour Hoffman does getting under the skin of Truman Capote in Capote. And yes, the performance is that good, from walk to talk.
But there's lots to be said about the movie itself and everything it accomplishes as a dramatic piece. Kudos to, of all people, a sometime sitcom actor.
With this story of Truman Capote's journey to a literary heart of darkness, Dan Futterman (Barry on Will & Grace) tells more than the story of a troubled man writing In Cold Blood. Capote is as much about the Faustian bargain struck when interviewer and interviewee become advocate and victim. It raises troubling questions about the price paid when fact is subjectivized into fiction. (An ironic insight from a Hollywood screenwriter).
And it does it all while treating its characters with the utmost humanity -- its fey, bitchy protagonist most of all.
When we meet Capote, he has, on the strength of works like Breakfast At Tiffany's, reinvented himself as a New York gadfly, wielding his wit at parties, drink in hand.
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There's a hole there, however, that his lover Jack (Bruce Greenwood) and his best friend and fellow Southerner Nelle Harper Lee (Catherine Keener) can't address. It comes into play when Capote fixates on a wire story about the mass murder of an upright family in Holcomb, Kansas. With Lee in tow almost as his "good cop," Capote travels to the heart of '50s Middle America, where he is as exotic as a platypus.
The movie is palpably alive almost from the moment he hits the plains. And nothing quite conveys the seductive charisma of this odd little man than the manner in which he is shown insinuating himself into the lives of the locals, bringing them into his "social circle," making them confidantes. To that end, director Bennett Miller practically invades our personal space with closeups.
This applies both to the chief investigator (Chris Cooper), whose wife turns out to be a fan of Capote, and to Perry Smith, the smarter of the two murderers and the one through whom Capote would channel the novel In Cold Blood. (Clifton Collins Jr., imbues his characterization with a faunlike vulnerability that contrasts with Robert Blake's menacing Perry in the movie In Cold Blood).
There is no moment as chilling, however, as when it's clear Capote knows his book will have an ending only when his imprisoned "friends" are executed.
This is not a portrait of a sociopath, someone who blithely doesn't care. Hoffman's Capote is clearly troubled between his quips and betrayals. More's the tragedy.
BOTTOM LINE: Great drama doesn't get much better than this. Philip Seymour Hoffman is transcendent, turning a talk show caricature into a believable human being. And scripter Dan Futterman crafts an impeccable arc that sees Capote deceive, flatter and manipulate his masterpiece into life (losing his soul and career in the process).
(This film is rated PG)