It's always hard to play someone whose celebrity is recent enough that we have a strong memory of how he looked and sounded, but to play Truman Capote must be a special piece of acting hell. Capote's voice and mannerisms were so distinctive that they bordered on self-caricature. How do you perform what is already a performance without getting lost in a spiral of parody and cartoon?
Somehow, Philip Seymour Hoffman pulls it off in Capote, getting all of the mannerisms and vocal quirks just right, but also giving us the human being hiding behind them. Hoffman's Capote is a man who is absolutely aware of how people react to him, of how they are both charmed and unnerved by his public persona, and most crucial, of how he can use those reactions to his advantage.
Capote is set in the years 1959-1964, when the author was writing what would become his masterpiece, the "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood, about two men who murdered a Kansas family. Throughout the movie, we watch as Capote charms and manipulates people -- the teenage girl who discovered the bodies, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation officer in charge of the case, the sister of one of the killers -- to get the interviews and the information he wants.
That manipulation comes with a price, to be sure; Capote, like journalists throughout history, struggles with the dilemma of how much lying and manipulation is acceptable in the name of getting the story. Dan Futterman's screenplay (based on Gerald Clarke's biography) suggests that this struggle, and Capote's guilt about his own actions, led to Capote's lack of productivity later in life; after In Cold Blood, Capote would publish only one book of short stories before his death in 1984.
The most important relationship Capote develops, and the one that calls for the most subtle manipulative skills, is with Perry Smith (a very good performance by Clifton Collins Jr.), one of the two killers. Capote finds himself genuinely drawn to Smith, an attraction that is equal parts friendship, lust, and disgusted fascination; this ultimately leads to the terrible conflict of not wanting Smith to be executed, but knowing that In Cold Blood cannot be finished until Smith is dead.
Hoffman, who seems not only to have lost a good bit of weight for the role, but to somehow have become six inches shorter, is superb here, and he's surrounded by a fine cast -- Catherine Keener, Bob Balaban, Chris Cooper, Bruce Greenwood. This is the first feature film for director Bennett Miller (he has one documentary to his credit), and it's a solid, assured piece of work
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