Capote: A
BY NEIL FAUERSO
Philip Seymour Hoffman inhabits Capote (©2005 UA/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS)
The problem with most biopics is that they try to match a written
biography, starting with birth, ending with death, and always squeezing clean
themes out of the subject’s life that were most likely never there or
were far more complex in reality. Even smart, edgy biopics like Kinsey have
clunky abrupt endings, because they set the arc too high. Generally better
are focused and episodic films like The Enigma of Kaspar
Hauser, Before Night Falls, and now Capote.
Bennett Miller’s film concerns the six-year period during which
Truman Capote became obsessed with the brutal murders of a family in a
small Kansas town and wrote In Cold Blood. There are no flashbacks to
Capote’s youth; his character is conveyed solely by the actor portraying
him. This demands an extraordinary performance, and like Bruno S. in Kaspar
Hauser and Javier Bardem in Before Night Falls, Philip Seymour Hoffman
is genuinely mesmerizing.
One of the first noticeable and wonderful things about Capote (and perhaps
a result of its low budget) is how easily and elegantly it feels of the
time. From the simple ranch homes in Kansas, to Capote’s Brooklyn
apartment, Capote is refreshingly without the holographic excess of more
expensive and soft-hearted biopics.
But then this not an ordinary portrait. Capote is, of course, a penetrating
and merciless evocation of the strange and shifty genius of Capote, but
it is also a devastating critique of representational art and the ego and
objectification intrinsic to it. Capote’s sympathy and intimacy to
the killers (so crucial to his book) is ultimately manipulative and two
faced. His eventual mental breakdown results from letting himself care,
all the while knowing that these men were just cogs in the creation of
his “masterpiece.”
Enough can’t be said of Hoffman. It is the most impressive and consummated
performance since Ralph Fiennes in Spider. Hoffman so completely inhabits
his role that usual accolades for performances seem downright tawdry. The
rest of the cast do not so much match him as quietly and efficiently do
their jobs. Still, Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper, and Clifton Collins
Jr. are all excellent and understated.
If there’s one flaw with Capote, which is beautifully shot
and edited, it’s the score by Mychael Danna—a turgid, extremely
clichéd,
ominous piano bit (just as films of the ’50s all have a similar score
that identifies their age, all serious movies of the last ten years
seem to have the same Eno-like piano score whose emotional impact
is now virtually irrelevant). But Capote is one of the films of
the year, and if Hoffman doesn’t win an Oscar, after Giamatti’s
snub for
Sideways, we’ll
really know that the Academy only gives awards to hardbodies.
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