Capote
affected me as deeply as any film I’ve seen in some time. So up front I think
it best to warn you that my discussion of it will probably serve as a perfect
spoiler. I’m sorry, but to simply give this amazing film a superficial yea
or nay sort of review just doesn’t interest me. I was a little surprised
when it was nominated for best picture, I’m not at all surprised now that
I’ve seen it. In fact at this point I dare say that it’s poised to sneak
up in the same dark horse fashion as The Pianist and grab the gold. And unless
a landslide Brakes down the Mountain, I’ll certainly be shocked if Phillip
Seymour Hoffman’s superb work goes un-awarded. Though his transformation
into character isn’t as dramatic as Jamie Foxx’s Ray Charles, it was
certainly remarkable and belongs in the time capsule, as does the film itself.
From
the opening seconds of the film, I knew Capote was going to be a very personal
experience for me. The murders at the heart of the story took place just over
a month before I was born and the spot-on period detail - the cars, architecture,
clothing, furniture - everything looked exactly how the world looked when I first
began to take notice of it. Seeing it always stirs that faint ache in that deepest
of places where my oldest memories and emotions reside. I suppose a place inaccessible
to the murderer Perry Smith and his cunning partner of sorts, Truman Capote. Two
men so scarred by their tragic disaffecting childhoods that they recognized a
bond. The films haunting exploration of this bond is what makes Capote such a
truly extraordinary experience. I guess I really wasn’t expecting the film
to be such an intense and unflinching examination of human nature, nor did I expect
that the title character would be portrayed in such a scathingly unflattering
light. That Hoffman was able to keep you on his side for as much of the movie
as he did, as well as keeping things light on their feet amid such profound pathos
is why he’ll probably win the Oscar. It’s just one of those performances
that can rightfully be placed beside Jack Nicholson’s in Cuckoo’s Nest
and Gregory Peck’s in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Obviously
I didn’t choose Peck’s performance randomly, as one of the most fascinating
aspects of the story, and quite frankly one of the main reasons I’ve been
dying to see this film is because I wanted to gain an understanding as to how
and why there existed this most unlikely friendship between Capote and Harper
Lee (the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, played brilliantly by the enormously
gifted Catherine Keener). From what I managed to gather from the film, I believe
they grew up in the same neighborhood and were childhood friends. Boy, talk about
Dill and Boo Radley all rolled into one. Anyone who knows me well, will be quick
to answer that my favorite film of all time is To Kill a Mockingbird, and the
fact that it’s author, whom I’ve revered since I was Eleven years old,
was childhood friends with Truman Capote is as bizarre a coincidental circumstance
as I can think of. If you’re familiar with Jem and Scout and Atticus, you’ve
got to believe that Dill was inspired by Truman. How fascinating is it, that while
she was writing Mockingbird she was with Capote in Kansas working as a research
assistant for In Cold Blood? Goodness - I can scarcely wrap the old Bone brain
around that. Considering that it took place concurrently - they were like the
John Lennon and Paul McCartney of literature. In fact I’d like to challenge
our readers to top that for bizarre coincidences. Good night and good luck.
Anyway,
at the time of the murders Capote was kind of the go-to feature reporter for the
New Yorker. The magazine that published a quirky little short story by E. Annie
Proulx entitled Brokeback Mountain. Alright enough with the Jack Twists. Early
on in the film we see Capote clipping out a news story about a grisly multiple
homicide inside a remote farmhouse in Kansas. He calls his editor (Bob Balaban)
and that very night he’s on a train to Kansas, and sharing his cabin is Harper
Lee, Elvis Presley and JFK. Every word of this is gospel. Upon reaching Holcomb
Kansas (the town in Mockingbird is “Maycomb” and is fictitious) they
are treated with suspicion and open disdain by local law enforcement, but between
Harper’s folksy charm, Truman’s devious cunning and the starstruck wife
of the main police investigator, it isn’t long before they’ve gained
access to every aspect of the story and to a large degree, become part of the
story as well. Chris Cooper plays Alvin Dewey, the main lawman in the story, with
that quiet, bible belt stoicism that he’s all but minted. The Dewey’s
open their home to the town’s celebrated guests, but Cooper keeps them at
a cool distance. He was a good friend of the man whose throat was cut before he,
his wife, son and daughter were shot in the head at close range with a shotgun,
and once Capote oversteps his bounds, he levels a threat over the dinner table
that comes into play in the final act.
Capote
is painted as the life of the party, funny and devilishly clever and up until
this point and well after the audience is on his side. Incidentally, he was an
out-of-the-closet homosexual before anyone even knew that there was a closet and
though the film is perfectly open about his relationship with Jack Dunphy (Bruce
Greenwood) never is there a mention of homosexuality. This was a day before sexual
preference had been elevated to any kind of political issue, it was more of a
novelty. Men like Capote and Liberace, were looked upon with curiosity more than
prejudice. Thus it doesn’t have any effect on the story, and in the innocence
of the day, I think more people regarded his strange, swishy manner as individual
eccentricity more than anything involving morality. Not everyone was naive to
it, obviously not the New York cocktail crowd, but by and large homosexuality
just had yet to emerge, which was refreshing in a way and I mention it just because
it adds another very interesting facet to the story.
After
Smith and Hickock are tried guilty and sentenced to hang, there is a revelatory
moment that hints at where the film is going, but at the time you’re still
so enamored of Capote’s clever ingenuity that it slips by unnoticed. It involves
the bribing of the prison warden in order to gain ready access to the prisoners,
it’s one of the funnier moments of the film because of Hoffman’s delivery
of some great writing, still it marks a turning point - unrecognizable to everyone
including Truman himself at the time, but it’s truly the point of no return
for the writer. It’s a truism that many of our great writers make great personal
sacrifices for their craft, and truly Capote reaped great fame and wealth for
the book (In Cold Blood) he would bring out of that prison. But he plumbed unfathomable
depths to dredge it out, indulging in shameful deceit and manipulation. It became
hard to watch, as he befriends the condemned Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and forestalls
his execution so that he might have enough time to fully exploit the situation.
He plays and betrays his friend until he finally manages to get what he needs.
Then when the Supreme Court issues a stay of execution he is seized by fear, turns
to the bottle with a vengeance and soon we see him for the selfish petulant, coward
that he was. At a party where his friend Harper Lee is being celebrated after
the release of the filmed version of her book, he drinks himself into a corner
and remains in a foul, unapproachable stupor. Harper Lee was his conscience and
her success for her brilliant life-affirming work was like rock salt to his wounded
world.
It’s
not like you’re altogether unsympathetic to his situation, his fear of Cooper’s
threat was real, but his inability to face Smith and the fact that he literally
had to pray that these men (who considered him their friend and defender) would
die in the gallows and soon, so that his book would have the poetic ending he’d
already written, was beyond haunting. It left him a whimpering shell of a man
and left the audience without anyone or anything to side with. And nothing to
root for but to see men swing at the end of a rope? This story is told so brilliantly
that it’s just humbling. The many ironies are illuminated with Shakespeare-like
sharpness and Hoffman shades his performance with remarkable subtlety. As is well
known Capote’s prayers were answered, the stay was reversed and Smith got
what he deserved. Hickock on the other hand did not do any of the killing and
he hung anyway and Truman got what he deserved. In Cold Blood turned him into
the golden boy of American literature.
The
message of director Bennett Miller and writers Dan Futterman and Gerald Clarke
masterful film is pointed and plain - it was Truman Capote who became the ultimate
victim of his own machinations, he got what he needed in order to create his masterpiece,
but he quite literally sold his soul to get it. And in spite of the celebrity,
the Johnny Carson show, the endless parties - everything that he craved and imagined
would make up for the misery of his childhood, he quite summarily drank himself
to death and died a lonely, haunted man. Never to publish again. And I can’t
help but think the film’s creators want you to believe that he deserved it.
