The Truman Show

No, not that one. This one...

Capote (Bennett Miller, 2005)

This film opens beautifully. A series of slow, lingering establishing shots, situating us in the bleak Kansas countryside, almost like the outback it's so sparse. The cinematography rarely paces up throughout the film, holding back, in long shot after long shot, allowing the action to play out within the frame in an almost theatrical way. Technically, I thought it was great. Still, enough camera chat...

The bare bones of this story are historical; American author Truman Capote is researching and writing his legendary novel, In Cold Blood, based on a real-life 1959 murder case in the afore-mentioned Kansas. An entire family murdered in a quiet town, seemingly for no reason. Capote decides to write a fictionalised account of the aftermath of this tragic event, and in doing so develops a close, and complex relationship with one of the killers, Perry Smith. The film meanders through the entire period, from the tragic event itself, through various interviews, the writing of the book, as well as quite a lot of not-writing of the book, to the eventual completion of the novel and the execution of the offenders. This epic span represents a number of years and one sees how wholly the events and the writing take over Capote’s life.

The film raises challenging questions about the processes of justice and the place of authorship, and the fuzzy grey line where fact meets fiction. Another point of interest is the film’s ambiguous attitude to the killers and to them being ‘used’ by Mr. Capote. One is left in a fair old moral quandary, after all Capote treated Smith appallingly - he (Capote) fluctuates between seemingly genuine concern and interest for the young man in his incarceration, (even finding the pair a lawyer, who lands them an appeal), and latterly closing himself off entirely, losing interest once he has what he needs. And yet, in the course of the story, it becomes clear that they did indeed commit this cold-blooded and heinous crime, and so the buggers deserve everything they get, right?! Tricky tricky. I hope I never get called up for jury service.

As the film progresses, it becomes clear that Capote’s contribution to the cause of the convicts’ freedom was only ever to buy himself time, and that his motivations were only ever selfish. Indeed, Capote’s persistent, blatant and fairly despicable self-absorption is my most lingering memory of this film… his false friendship with Smith, his constant "woe is me"-ing, his complete lack of support for his exasperated friends (most notably the excellent Catherine Keener as Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mocking Bird). In fact, if the film’s portrayal of him is even slightly accurate, and I’d been there at the time, I'd have probably punched him in the face. Regular party scenes intercut the more serious drama, and in each of these scenes we find Capote… leant back, louche and leonine in a crowd of sycophantic admirers; he holds court, spouting one witty anecdote after another and chuckling in his ridiculous camp-Cartman voice - what a d*ckhead. Oh, I'm not denying he was a talented and fascinating chap, changing the face of American literature etc., but seriously, shut up mate.

Aside from my personal gripes with our eponymous hero, this film was very well made. Performances uniformly excellent, tone tense and slow to unwind, I still found myself captivated throughout – more so than I thought in fact, when our DVD player packed up around chapter 20, we thought nothing of 4 of us (and a large cat) all crowding round a laptop for the remaining hour, so keen were we to reach the conclusion!

Image from filmadelphia.org - with thanks.