Capote

We saw Capote today and for my money it was excellent. The one rap I have heard about the movie is that Capote exploited the killers in the Clutter family killings. The movie does an excellent portrait of Capote during the time he was writing what turned out to be his last completed novel, In Cold Blood. In biographies of Capote there is always a recognition that Capote was a character within a character. In essence he became and created his own characture. One biographer explains that when Capote first went to the New Yorker he would wear a black opera cape. So even early in his career, he was trying to be the symbol.

There are some unstateds in the movie. For example, Harper Lee, who is a major character in the movie, was indeed a childhood friend from the south. The character Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird is modeled after Capote. But Lee is simply presented as his research assistant. After Capote broke out, soon after WWII he became a literary figure. So the portrayals in the movie seem accurate. Other portrayals explain, which is reinforced in the movie, that Capote did not take notes in all of his interviews.

The book was a big deal at the time, it was a new form of writing. Capote spent a long time writing it, almost six years. The movie suggests that Capote wanted the two crimminals to be executed so he could finish his book. That may be a bit unfair - clearly Capote the New York literary figure seems to have gotten caught up in the small town goings on of Holcomb where the murders and trial took place. When the movie of the novel was done they used the actual court house and the actual jury in the scenes. He said this about his book - "This book was an important event for me. While writing it, I realized I just might have found a solution to what had always been my greatest creative quandary. I wanted to produce a journalistic novel, something on a large scale that would have the credibility of fact, the immediacy of film, the depth and freedom of prose, and the precision of poetry."

There is also some other evidence of him being caught up in the events he was covering. He never wrote another book - although he did eventually publish some short stories. So while he seems to have been using the two killers - especially Perry Smith - he also seems to have become involved in the life of the two he was covering.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman seems to have captured the complexities of Capote - all of the ego, the genuine intelligence of the man and all of his quirks. In my mind he deserved the best actor Oscar. As noted earlier, I thought Good Night and Good Luck was a bit of a cardboard performance. It was a good imitation of Murrow but lacked the depth that Capote did. Joaquin Phoenix was also excellent in Walk the Line - but Hoffman had a much harder role.

At the end of his life he got caught in the caricature that he had constructed. He would write profiles of the people he came to know - with warts and all - and eventually people began to cut him off. All of this suggests that he was a complex figure who wrote one fun novella (Breakfast at Tiffany's) and one new kind of novel (In Cold Blood).