MUBI

Before November 1959, Holcomb, Kansas was a peaceful farming town in the American heartland. On that date, it became the site of a brutal family murder which was chronicled by Truman Capote in In Cold Blood, one of the most important books ever written. It not only changed literature but also, in a way, created a genre of its own. The tragic account was, of course, nonfiction, but Capote wrote it as if he were telling a story. The number of nonfiction books written since then that have followed that formula is impossible to count.
What’s truly amazing is that the story fell into the hands of Truman Capote in the first place. Feasting on his success at glittery parties in Manhattan with his boastfully “controversial” friends, Capote (no stranger or opponent to controversy himself) came from an entirely different world. He was a smart man but arrogant and vain.
A theme of Bennett Miller’s Capote, a near perfect film, is the ethics of Capote’s investigation for In Cold Blood and the extent he was willing to manipulate people for a scoop. Had Capote been a biopic, it would have been one of the best (if not the best) films of its kind. But it’s much more complex than a simple biography of the man. Biopics, almost as a rule, feel an overall sense of duty to their subject. Capote feels none. It’s not an attack on Truman capote, but an honest portrait of a complicated legend.
Besides his lover Jack Dunphy (Bruce Greenwood), Capote’s only real friend was the American literary legend Harper Lee, played to perfection by Catherine Keener. Although she had been friends with Capote since childhood and in her masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird modeled the character of Dill (the boy who visits every summer) after him, she too would later have reservations about the man.
Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance is transcendent and we never doubt that he is Truman Capote. Of course, we’ve come to expect nothing less from Hoffman, and his Oscar was much deserved. Many lesser actors would have gone for an exaggerated mockery of Capote’s voice and mannerisms. Hoffman, instead, masters his nuance.
A collectively great voice is that of the townspeople in Holcomb. They are reluctant to speak with Capote, perhaps because he seems so eccentric to them. When Capote manages to interview a friend of the slain Clutter family we are in for a very sad moment. We also begin to see how Capote starts his interviewing process. He makes people comfortable enough to open up. His charisma is in full force when he is invited to dinner by the Dewey family.
Alvin Dewey is the town police detective and is played by Chris Cooper, one of the great character actors of our day. He is a hard man to break and honors his duty as an authority figure. Capote, however, changes his mood when he tells the sad story of his mother’s death and how he had to comfort his stepfather. That prompts Dewey to share more details of the case.
A new lead arrives when two drifters are arrested and charged with the murders. It is a somber moment when the police march the two stunned young men in front of the bewildered citizens of the town. The movements are almost shot in slow-motion to capture the emotions on everyone’s face. Although Capote initially stated that he didn’t care if they caught the killers, he seizes the chance to manipulate them for a story when they are caught and that’s why his investigation for In Cold Blood is so controversial to this day.
Rumor has it that Truman Capote fell in love with Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), the emotionally weaker of the two killers and, to this day, the harder one to decipher. Perry opens up to Capote and the writer has a theory as of why. Although they led two very different lives and lived in two different worlds (the movie contrasts them by shifting locales from Kansas to New York), their upbringing was eerily similar. They both lost their mothers and spent a childhood of loneliness. Capote became a success and Perry a pathetic creature who turned into a murderer. His paranoia never left him (he would often dream about a big yellow bird that came to take him away) and his accomplice, Richard Hickock (Mark Pellegrino), obviously saw that and manipulated him. What many people forget is that while Hickock was clearly the stronger of the two, evidence indicates that Perry Smith did all of the killings. Perhaps, as has been speculated, he identified the Clutters as the ideal family he missed out on and he had to destroy what he never had.
It would be interesting to know what kind of relationship Truman Capote and Perry Smith had. It is a mystery that will likely never be solved, but the letter that Smith sends Capote while he is away in Spain does sound like a love note. At other times, as when Capote is feeding a sick Perry baby food in his cell, it feels like a weird paternal relation.
Capote’s best move is that we never know what Capote’s motivations are. Does he want to break new ground or is he just trying to sell his book? Did he really fall in love with Perry? Director Bennett Miller simply gives us a portrait of a complex situation and asks us what we see.
What we can be sure of is that Perry Smith shared one other trait with Truman Capote and that is showmanship. Before his execution he talked about rehearsing a speech he would recite if he ever won an award. Both killers were manipulative too. They became very concerned with how Capote would present them in the book. Capote focused almost entirely on Perry’s testimony, however, creating an imbalance in In Cold Blood. As Perry Smith, Clifton Collins Jr. deserved a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his performance. When he tells his story, we cannot help but listen and be entranced by Collins’s emotional and chilling delivery.
Truman Capote was a genius of a dangerous kind. He really was as good as he thought he was and that is what made him so insufferable as a man. His efforts show and In Cold Blood is an American literary masterpiece, but it’s a bit disconcerting to consider that to make the book that great he manipulated a town, two convicts, and even the legal system. Even Harper Lee starts having doubts about the ethics of his exploitations. When he gets what he needs out of Perry Smith, he drops his interest in their stay of execution and the two men are hanged.
There is little doubt that Truman Capote was distraught by the ordeal and maybe that’s why In Cold Blood was the last book he finished. It is also probable that he did feel guilt accompanying his pride after his accomplishment. This is interesting because in the journalistic In Cold Blood, Capote never expresses his emotions. Capote, however, understands the man well enough not to repress his feelings.