Capote

"3 stars out of 4"

Capote is rather an old movie but I only got to see it for the first time yesterday.

I know that Philip Seymour Hoffman has won almost all the awards possible for this movie back in 2005, including the Oscar. So, there is no need for me to tell you how brilliant his transformation was into Truman Capote, the writer who wrote about the killings that took place in Kansas back in 1959. The course of writing this "non-fiction" book called "In cold blood" and the impact that it had on Capote was so overwhelming that he never got to finish another book after that.

 The story of this movie takes place between 1959 and 1965 when he finished this book and mainly shows us how he gets dragged into this story and changes his life, leading to an early death in 1984 due to alcoholism.

The film starts by showing how Capote usually tries to "steal the show" in parties and how he entertains people and wants to be the center of attention. Later on we understand that he had been abandoned as a child and this characteristic was probably because now he tries to compensate for all the attention that he hadn't got as a child.

He hears about the killings in Kansas, where 4 people from the same family were killed in their house. He calls the editor of the newspaper he works for and tells him that this is the next thing that he wants to write about. He goes to Kansas in search for what these killings have done to the people living in the town where the killings took place. When he reaches there we see him tell one of the officers in charge of this case (played by Chris Cooper) that he doesn't care if they catch the one who did this. However, after two people are arrested for the murders, he goes to meet them and instantly decides to write about them. In one scene we see him tell his childhood friend, the famous author of "To kill a mockingbird" Harper Lee (played by Catherine Keener, who was also nominated for an Academy Award for her role in this movie) that the suspect is a gold mine and "when I think how good my book can be I can hardly breathe".

He meets with the prisoners and mainly with the first suspect Perry Smith, and gains their trust in a way that he even gives Capote his notebooks.

Capote sees many similarities between himself and Smith. In his notebook Perry writes "...if called upon to make a speech..." which means that he also seeks (or at least sought!) fame as Capote did, or how Perry's brother and sister had killed themselves as had Capote's mother. At one point we see Capote telling Harper "It's like Perry and I grew up in the same house, and one day he went out the back door and I went out the front"! But he hides this from Perry to find the perfect ending for his book. He also hides the title that he had chosen for his book from Perry because he didn't want Perry to think that he saw him as a cold-blooded murderer and to keep the trust he had gained. Capote was raised with the same surroundings as Perry and maybe if put in the same situation, he would have done the same thing! There's a thin line between bad and good.

Perry tells Capote that he and his accomplice thought there was ten thousand dollars at the house where they had murdered the family and they had tied them up. He had even prevented the accomplice from raping the daughter of the family. But when Perry had been talking to the father of the family, he says that he thought the man was a nice guy up until he slit his throat! I think this means that he was angry...at the world for not being fair! And killing them was his revenge. I think he thought it wasn't fair that he was abandoned as a child when there were families like this that cared about each other. So he loses it in a moment and goes on to murder them all. This movie shows what I believe, that there is no such thing as a bad person. It's just the environment where we grow in that makes us who we are and it depends on the way we are brought up, the things that happen to us that makes one become a famous author and the other a notorious killer. Maybe it also depends on the strength of each individual as well and how he reacts to what happens to him in his life. Maybe if Capote hadn't become successful and thought the world hadn't been fair to him, he would have done the same thing if put in the same situation.

He promises perry to find them a good lawyer and postpones their execution so he can write about it and obviously enough he doesn’t keep his promise and after four years of dragging the case through supreme court, he fails to find them a lawyer or simply doesn’t want to after being done with the book. When he tells Harper that he had done everything he could and couldn't help them, Harper tells him "Maybe, but the fact is you didn't want to". Although we see how deeply he was affected by this. He even lies about Perry's sister missing him, just to keep the trust or maybe keep interested in helping him finish his book. But he abandons Perry after the book is finished. He is depressed, probably from feeling guilty because deep down he knows that he has betrayed Perry and it could have easily been Capote himself waiting to be executed.

We see Capote say he will never get over it...and he never did.

I give this movie 3 stars because while it had an amazing performances aside from the leading man, such as the guy who played Perry Smith, Clifton Collins Jr, it lacked consistency. It jumped from one scene to a whole other one that left you lingering with the feeling you had from the previous scene. Also, while it was able to keep you interested to see the course Capote was going through, it wasn't...how should I say it...as "interesting" as it could have been! But after all, it's a very good movie to see if you have the time.

Hope you enjoyed my first review!

A little footnote: Ebert has given this movie 4 out of 4 stars and says "If "Capote" had simply flipped the coin and told the story of the Clutter murders from Capote's point of view, it might have been a good movie, but what makes it so powerful is that it looks with merciless perception at Capote's moral disintegration."