What I'm Watching...

Everything about Capote—which fairly quickly dispenses with the murders, Capote's arrival on the scene, the investigation, and the trial, and then lingers over the disturbing relationship between the writer and the murderer, which is to say over the change from Capote's initial nurturing of his 'amigo' (as Smith liked to say) to his brutal refusal, at the end, either to help or to correspond with the convicted murderer as the date of the execution, and with it the completion of his book, drew near—has just the right feel to it: as grave and considered as Capote's book, as sobering as his moral tragedy. Everything here, from the look of the movie (which is so severely photographed that I was convinced, after the first time I saw it, that it had been shot in black and white, until a second viewing set me straight) to the performances and script, is remarkable for an unusual degree of restraint. The writer and director both seem to have immersed themselves not only in Clarke's biography of Capote, but in In Cold Blood itself, and the film they've created has the same austerity and sombre rhythms that give the book its distinctive poetry....

Much will be written about the portrayal of Truman Capote by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and rightly so: it is a marvelous performance. More, it is a performance, rather than an act of mimicry. Hoffman wisely avoids "doing" Capote: he provides enough of the well-known mannerisms and vocal tics to authenticate his portrayal of a familiar public figure, but what makes his rendition so satisfying is that he manages to convey a coherent character—selfish, amusing, ambitious, sentimental, and, in the end, ruthless—in the terse drama the filmmakers have created, one that can stand quite apart from the real-life story.

This is a remarkable movie with two equally remarkable performances. Both, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Clifton Collins Jr., the guys pictured above, deserve Oscar nominations.

And if you haven't read the book, do so. It'll scare the peanuts out of your shit. Chilling, terrifying, and beautiful, it's one of America's greatest contributions to literature.

And you know me. I'm not given to hyperbole.