Hoffman is Capote, and he dominates this film just as Capote would have, if the flamboyant writer were in it.
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Some roles, an actor was just meant to play. That's certainly the case with Philip Seymour Hoffman and "Capote." There isn't actor in or outside of Hollywood who could have captured the voice, the mannerisms, and, yes, the soul (but let's call it subtle inner complexities) of the American writer as convincingly as he did. What's more, Hoffman managed to do it with sensitivity, while other actors might have buckled under the weight of Truman Capote's unabashedly flamboyant public persona and served up a caricature instead.
In one of the extras on this single-disc release, Hoffman says that he recalls seeing Capote on the late-night talk-show circuit. I saw him too, often with his legs crossed feminine style and dressed in white like a latter-day Tennessee Williams, speaking and gesturing with all the I'm me, deal with it confidence of a Key West drag queen. Capote was entertaining in two ways—as a brilliant, quick-witted commentator on society and celebrity, and, in those later years, as a foppish dandy who drew laughs as well for his antics and affectations. "You know who else is a friend of mine?" I recall him saying to an about-to-burst Johnny Carson. Then, leaning forward as if confiding, not name-dropping in front of three million people, he'd say, smugly, "Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis." This was the laugh-at-him side of Capote.
Thankfully, Hoffman, writer Dan Futterman, and director Bennett Miller ignore that side and instead depict the man who was a talented writer and the darling of the society world—a 5' 4" sparkplug of a fellow who was invited to celebrity parties simply because he was intelligent and fun to be around. His literary output, prior to "In Cold Blood," was interesting but second-tier at best, with a southern coming-of-age first novel ("Other Voices, Other Rooms," 1948), a short story collection ("A Tree of Night," 1949), a tree-house escape yarn ("The Grass Harp," 1951), and his first head-turner, a novella about a young Manhattan prostitute ("Breakfast at Tiffany's," 1958). Other than that, his literary fame rested in the non-fiction he wrote as a staffer for "The New Yorker."
"In Cold Blood" was Capote's opus magnum . . . a blockbuster because it was the first literary work to advertise itself as a "non-fiction novel." It made Capote famous and helped launch the New Journalism genre, which saw writers combine reporting with opinion and fiction techniques in their non-fiction, often inserting themselves as a character. But I remember being struck mostly by the intimacy of the book. "In Cold Blood" told the story of how two drifters planned to rob a family in an isolated Kansas farmhouse and ended up killing the Clutters and their two teen-aged children. It was a case that shocked the nation, and Capote used alternate points of view to show the killers buying rope and tape and the things they'd need to subdue the family in one chapter while showing the Clutters going about their morning routines in another. This back and forth continued until readers felt a heightened sense of impending disaster—like watching the Titanic and the iceberg slowly converge.
"Capote" opens with the author reading the newspaper account of the murders and deciding to investigate. With friend and assistant Nelle Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), who would go on to write "To Kill a Mockingbird," he travels to Holcomb, Kansas (in the world of cinema, make that Winnepeg, where "Capote" was shot) to do baseline research. At first, predictably, this mannered New Yorker and his big-city flair rub people the wrong way—especially Sheriff Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper). But as is often the case with small towns, it's the women who are tapped into what's happening outside their provincial world, and Dewey's wife, Marie (Amy Ryan) not only knows how famous Capote is. She wants to meet the writer, and it's through her that Capote is able to connect with her husband. But connection has never been a problem for Capote. Within weeks he's "the mayor" of the town, a popular figure because of his charm and warmth.
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