Capote (15) (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Capote (15)

Truman Capote was a highly entertaining genius and among the many things he wrote was Breakfast at Tiffany's. The rich and famous adored having him to their parties, with his quick wit and acid tongue, but he wasn't a very attractive character. This film covers a vital period of less than six years of his life, when he wrote his best selling non-fiction novel 'In Cold Blood'.

On November 15 1959 Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) the New Yorker magazine journalist saw a story in the newspaper about the Clutter family of Kansas who were murdered in cold blood. He decides this disaster is to be his next article, but when two drifters are taken in to custody for the murders, he sees a book in the offing. Over the passing years, while researching his project, he becomes emotionally, though not physically involved with one of the drifters Perry (Clifton Collin Jr). However, in order to finish his book he needs them to die. Indeed when they are eventually hanged on April 14 1965 Capote tells his best friend the writer Nelle Harper Lee (Catherine Keener) "There wasn't anything I could have done to save them" to which she replied "Maybe, but the fact is you didn't want to". The whole experience was a nightmare for Capote and totally corrupted his soul, which lead to his early death.

Seymour Hoffman gives a tour de force performance and it came as no surprise he won both the Oscar and Bafta for best actor. From the opening scene he is mesmerising as he fully captures Capote's mannerisms and squeaky childlike voice. The film is powerfully written, though it never explains why his lover Jack Dunphy (Bruce Greenwood) and Harper Lee (Harper Lee was to find her own fame when she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird) stood by him, when he really was insufferably self-absorbed. All the supporting cast is the best of the best, but their characters are never very well developed. The truth is without Seymour Hoffman this film would not be the masterpiece it is. 9/10