A Portrait of the Artist as a Monster
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There was no movie in the New York Film Festival I wanted to see less than “Capote,” a re-creation of the years when Truman Capote was embroiled in the making of his most famous book, “In Cold Blood.” Word on the street was that director Bennett Miller had made a handsome, tasteful picture, and that Philip Seymour Hoffman was splendid, magnificent, amazing, etc., in the title role. But when movie people started predicting – even demanding – recognition at Oscar time, all I could think about was whether or not to go see “A History of Violence” for a fourth time.
I had quite enough of this stuff last year when the hype started building over “Kinsey” and “Ray.” Call me a snob, but watching either of those middlebrow mediocrities strikes me as a less productive use of time than listening to a Ray Charles album while having sex – or even just fantasizing about it. No one has bothered to question how much these entertainments rely on the cheap high you get when famous people imitate other famous people. Isn’t Jamie Foxx the real subject of “Ray?” And how interesting, really, is Jamie Foxx?
Whatever the ostensible subject or theme, the biographical movie is a genre in thrall to the supreme myth of our age: the great, grubby fallacy of fame. No wonder Hollywood keeps churning them out. Biopics are the new Westerns, dead celebrities are the new cowboys, and I’m getting awfully sick of these here oats.
Nevertheless, I dragged myself to see “Capote” (opening tonight in New York) and was surprised to discover, if not quite a revisionist example of the genre, an unusually tough-minded movie whose hard, sharp pleasures are incidental to historical fact or thespian showboating. It’s true that Mr. Hoffman’s performance is a major feat of mimicry. Posing and preening in his Bergdorf scarf, he lisps haughty bon mots in perfect approximation of the unstoppable Trumanator. This is the dandy as viper: alert, twisty, venomous. Mr. Hoffman controls every gesture down to the nerve ending, and they all signal “nominate me.” Performances don’t get any bigger.
What’s striking about “Capote” is the nature of the box that contains his super-sized virtuosity. The narrative is remarkably circumspect. Dan Futterman’s screenplay (based on the celebrated biography by Gerald Clarke) begins in 1959, at the moment when Capote discovers a newspaper item about the brutal murder of an unremarkable Kansas family, and ends some six years later with the execution of Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino) and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) for their crimes. The hundred-odd minutes in between concentrate exclusively on Capote’s meticulous investigation of the story and the arduous task of manipulating his re search into the groundbreaking “nonfiction novel” that would be his third and final book.
Capote never recovered from the writing of “In Cold Blood,” and the movie shows us, with very cold blood indeed, some compelling reasons why. The Capote of “Capote” is a portrait of the artist as monster, a case study in the occupational hazards of a professional prodigy. In his dealings with others, he is vain, exploitative, self-serving, callous, calculating, cruel. If there is honor in his commitment to the book, it is tainted by hubris and comes at the expense of loved ones (Bruce Greenwood as novelist Jack Dunphy, his lover; Catherine Keener as friend Harper Lee).
Capote’s relationship with Perry Smith develops into the dark heart of the film. “It’s as if Perry and I grew up in the same house,” Capote muses, “and one day he went out the back door and I went out the front.” This helpless, handsome, murderous naif, on whose confidence the completion of “In Cold Blood” depends, stirs Capote in ways brilliantly revealed and guarded by Mr. Hoffman. His betrayal of that confidence, his abandonment of Perry the man for Perry the subject, serves as the grim denouement of Capote’s opportunism, and the linchpin of “Capote” as cautionary tale.
This is no act of character assassination. Rather than prop up Capote for our amusement, or present a fallen angel for us to pity and admire, the filmmakers take a step back, giving us distance to think on the ethics of art and the pitfalls of ego. It’s a testament to their rigor and restraint that Capote never descends to a despicable grotesque. This chilling movie is shot with a palpable chill in the image. Not one cut jars the steady flow of the movie, where the strictly measured rhythm reinforces a sense of psychological strictures and the inexorable creep of dreadful endings. Competent compositions favor balance, order, and evenly distributed light, and nothing gets in the way of the players.
I’m sure Mr. Hoffman will get that Oscar nod, and why not? For all the skill of the script and direction, everything hangs on the fey shrug of his shoulders. But “Capote” only begins with a great ape routine. Here’s a biopic where celebrity is a curse, not a crutch, and sentiment is pierced by skepticism.