Capote: Count the Cost
For the first 20 minutes of the film, I objectively admired the early 60’s color palette, all muted beige, grey-green, and yellow-orange. I wondered how it is that a camera can make drinking and smoking look so damned good. Then, with only a “Bergdorf’s” warning, Philip Seymour Hoffman slayed me with the line, “Apparently, Detective Foxy’s wife has read fiction,” and I was no longer on the sidelines. With humor, I was seduced and attached. Attached to Capote. Attached to Harper Lee, played with dignity and intensity by the wonderful Catherine Keener. Hoffman’s portrayal of Capote is confident and comfortable, whether mouthing “Jealous” to describe his lover’s reaction to Harper Lee’s success, or revealing extremely personal pieces of his life history to strangers in order to gain their trust. He is a man who knows how to manipulate his audience. It is only when Perry asks him the name of his book, and Capote lies for the first time, that we see this manipulation for what it is… truly cold-blooded, and the beginning of the end for poor Truman. Capote puts it all up for sale: his persona, his wit, his own story. He was always a desperate man, thriving on the attention of a faceless mob of interchangeable admirers. By the end though, all is gone, all is sold. We’re shocked as we see him hold his conscience under water in order to get Perry’s story about the night the Clutters were killed, we see its death throes as he ignores Perry’s desperate pleas for help as the execution date approaches. At some point, preserving the book superceded preserving the self. In the end, all he has left is Harper Lee, his external conscience. When Capote tells her (at the premier of “To Kill a Mockingbird”) that he’s “tortured” because Perry and Dick have gotten a stay of execution, she replies, “I see.” And there is so much to see, if we can stand to see it.
Admirably done, Bennett Miller.
I read In Cold Blood for the first time about 2 years ago. I say for the first time, although I haven’t read it twice, and may never be able to. In Cold Blood reintroduced me to the horror and morbid fascination of last minutes, an obsession I thought I had left behind with relief. In recreating the formative and transformative process of writing In Cold Blood, Capote captures that sweaty trickle of terror felt as we look ahead at our own stark, unyielding futures and holds it up for our recognition. We may not be Nancy Clutter, hearing our killers climbing the stairs, shotgun in hand. We may never frantically breathe in and out in panic as a black mask is pulled over our faces. But like that slow moving train that makes its way across the plains in the most memorable shot of the film, there is no doubt about the destination. We, too, can see it for miles. Truman Capote lost all he had to lose by April 14, 1965. The rest was just a long walk to the gallows.
Admirably done, Bennett Miller.
I read In Cold Blood for the first time about 2 years ago. I say for the first time, although I haven’t read it twice, and may never be able to. In Cold Blood reintroduced me to the horror and morbid fascination of last minutes, an obsession I thought I had left behind with relief. In recreating the formative and transformative process of writing In Cold Blood, Capote captures that sweaty trickle of terror felt as we look ahead at our own stark, unyielding futures and holds it up for our recognition. We may not be Nancy Clutter, hearing our killers climbing the stairs, shotgun in hand. We may never frantically breathe in and out in panic as a black mask is pulled over our faces. But like that slow moving train that makes its way across the plains in the most memorable shot of the film, there is no doubt about the destination. We, too, can see it for miles. Truman Capote lost all he had to lose by April 14, 1965. The rest was just a long walk to the gallows.