The Wake

Capote, a new Truman Capote biopic, is a complex film about a complex and contradictory man in literary history. Many people will find Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of Capote to be completely convincing. I found it to be distracting. Though, to be fair, I probably would have found in real life that Capote’s flamboyance would be distracting, but not so distracting that I couldn’t appreciate the interesting story underneath.

The film concentrates on the approximate six years Capote spent researching the murder of a Kansas family of four, which was the topic of his book, In Cold Blood. While a significant amount of time is spent on Capote’s relationship with convicted murderer Perry Smith, it isn’t the entire focus of the film. The heart of the movie is Capote’s obsession with getting the entire story, while not shying away from his uncanny ability to manipulate sources. The complicated and often contradictory ways this is shown in Hoffman’s Capote is nothing short of fascinating.

While Capote is the center of attention (by his own nature), secondary characters are given plenty of room to move. Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), local sheriff Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper) and author Harper Lee (Katherine Keener) all provide well-rounded characters.

Sounds good so far, right? Except the problem with biopics is they attempt to tell a real person’s story in the mold of a Hollywood formula. Details are changed for dramatic reasons, and the audience is normally forced to take what they’re told at face value. Most distracting for me is that a famous actor always plays the title role. In nearly every film about a real public figure, praise is heaped on the actor who supposedly truly inhabits the role. But all I see is a caricature.

Capote plays into this, but less so than most films of the genre. Because the story concentrates less on Capote’s personal life and more on his oddly personal-professional life, it attempts to tell the complete story of a harrowing murder. It doesn’t feel as “same-old” as it might have. I have yet to find any serious factual errors in Capote, though I’m sure there were changes made for dramatic purposes. And while I still saw a caricature, it was much more convincing than usual biopics.

Those of you out there, who are Truman Capote devotees, or die-hard fans of true crime stories, will find plenty to love in Capote. However, if you’re like me and have some reservations with seeing famous stories told by Hollywood, you might want to sit this one out. Like its famous subject, the film’s genre definitely has a handle on manipulation.