WWCD?

Capote (2005; d. Bennett Miller; s. Phillip Seymour Hoffman; Catherine Keener). You have to talk about the performances first in Capote. This film, along with The 40-Year-Old Virgin will hopefully break Keener out of her bitch goddess ghetto. In both films, Keener jobs like Shawn Michaels (ask Frank who this is), gaining audience sympathies with the misfit men, not through unconditional positive regard for Capote and Carrell, but instead via her honest recognition of their liabilities in concert with brave and thoughtful exhibition of her own character's raw edges. Keener reminds me of that quote about Ginger Roberts did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels. At least half the reason Hoffman and Carrell give such great performances is she lets these two actors crawl so far out on the limb, and remains a lighthouse for our continued interest in how things will turn out for them.

Still and all, it's Hoffman's show. Hoffman transforms for Capote, moreso than Flawless. I've always thought of Hoffman in part in terms of his physicality--his heft and his height (although I don't know if he's actually a tall man at all--could be more related to our usual stereotypes about actors). In Capote, he manages to look downright tiny, while still commanding our attention in ever scene through his seductive insinuation and preening narcissism. He is, in short, a star.

Capote has its mind on the classics; it's all about hubris and self-destruction. It's also one of the best movies about writing ever made. Capote's intricate, honest portraitures of the people in his life relies on two qualities: his immense empathy for them, and his scathing anger for the way in which they keep him at a distance. In destroying Perry Smith, Capote seeks to destroy that outsider part of himself; however, his disconnection and subsequent murder of that outsider destroys one of the fundamental qualities he needs to write.

The movie itself shares many of Capote's qualities. I winced my way through every scene, dying a little everytime Capote made another choice to kill himself by inches. What makes it worse is that the movie makes us aware that Capote knows what he's doing all the way down, and is suffering for it. At the same time, the film has such empathy for those choices, it's hard to turn our backs on him (as with Harper Lee--thanks Cath). How many times have we nodded along with the movie scenario where a character sacrifices his life for a greater cause. And how much has In Cold Blood changed the way we read and write?

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