Capote

Review

Capote was a movie eclipsed, somewhat, by the presence of Brokeback Mountain and that was a horrible mistake. Brokeback was a blend of pretty scenery, over the top acting, and painfully direct exposition. Capote, in contrast, is a subtle, powerful story. The odd thing is the similarities of the plot line inherent in both. Both deal with finding the person that feels right for you in the middle of nowhere, of trying to find a life outside of that person but being trapped by them. Both deal with loss and rememberance. Capote just does it better.

I was afraid, at the on set, that it would spend too much time being superficial. Long shots of landscape. Parties show up out of nowhere. Each scene as much jars with the last as flows together. Here we see Truman Capote, a man with an effeminate lisp and a tendency to be the center of attention at parties. We see his need to be accepted. We meet his friend(s). We meet the officer in charge of the investigation. The movie is progressing along nicely, but seems to look a little too hard at the surface.

It soon begins to get its feet on the ground. This movie is an act of near irony. It is a movie based on a book (I think), which is about a book that tried to depict real events in a wholy new and interesting way. Itself tries to depict the creation of this new form of "not fiction" in the same way that the source material did. It becomes recursive, but much like the original, it loses some grasp of its original being. It exposes the way in which those extraordinary moments of life can often feel as though they are scripted; so much so that they only way to capture their realism requires a strict script. People have to work hard to act that real.

I think, if anything, a detraction of the movie was allowing the press material to focus too hard on the underlying homoeroticsm in Truman and Perry's relationship. I have no doubt there was the idea of attraction present, but it seems more than that. Truman found two things at once: 1) a person that had suffered in a similar way as himself and 2) a story that had to be finished.

At first, the story has to be finished by keeping the killers alive. Later, it needs them dead. Truman is as willing to kill them as they were to kill the farmer's family. He has just as many excuses as they did. He has just as many reasons. He does it "in cold blood" in much the same. I think Perry and Truman are meant to be reflections of one another, not men falling in love. I think this is where the press drives the point awry.

One problem I have with the movie itself is it puts just a little too much blame on the events surrounding the writing of In Cold Blood as far as Truman's slide into alcoholism and despair goes. My own studies have tended to point him out as being a person who slid down those paths long before this book came along. That is part of the magic of Truman Capote, in some ways he was a horrible person, but brilliant.

Beautifully shot. Wonderfully acted. I loved the score. All nin all, a good movie to get into.

My score: 80.