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Continuing on our quest to catch up on the Oscar-nominated films, Seattlest went last night to see Capote, playing at the Harvard Exit (and now, thanks to Oscar-inspired wider release, also in Kirkland). We stopped along the way at Bailey/Coy to buy the book the movie's more or less about, which we haven't read, and scowled at the ratfink Now, a Major Motion Picture! sticker, announcing that we never got around to reading until the movie came out.
At any rate, we've now seen the movie, and here's who we think should go see it:
- People who love Philip Seymour Hoffman
- People who love movies with fabulous early-60s costumes and sets
- People who love writers
- People who love really really good movies
Because it's really really good. The film is about the years it took to write In Cold Blood, a book Capote described as a non-fiction novel chronicling the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, by two ex-cons who'd heard, wrongly, that the family had thousands of dollars stashed in their house. Capote reads of the murders in the New York Times and recruits his childhood friend Harper Lee, just before she published To Kill a Mockingbird, to come with him to Kansas to get the scoop.
The town greets him with mild suspicion, but Lee, played immensely likeably by Catherine Keener, smoothes the way just enough for Capote to unleash his considerable magnetism. It's riveting to watch this improbable fellow--pale, plump, prissy, and pompous--win over nearly everyone he speaks with, charming them with his erudition and connections and then disarming them with unexpected candor. With a deft balance of genuine sympathy and raging ego, he brings everyone into his confidence and inspires them to return the favor.
Capote finds both his most willing and his most challenging target in one of the killers, Percy Smith (played by Collins Jr). He forms a complicated bond with Smith that lasts for years as Capote plays god trying to get life to create a perfect story for him to write. He's chillingly good at it, first playing the angel of mercy and then... not so much.
Movies about writing are rare for a reason--it's not very interesting to watch a writer write--but though we seldom see him writing the film is patient and intent in a way that suggests the process of writing better than any others we've seen (except maybe Franz Kaftka's It's a Wonderful Life--go find it, quickly). We know that makes it sound boring as hell, but it isn't. And we have Hoffman to thank. No matter how good the script, the cinematography, the pacing, and all that had been--and they're damn good--the movie would have been mind-numbingly dull to watch had Hoffman not been so transfixing. Nearly everything he says feels somehow both unexpected exactly right. And his mouth never smiles when he laughs.
Further props to Keener, to Chris Cooper as the town's investigator Alvin Smith, and to Collins Jr.'s Percy, who really makes Capote work to find his inner heartless monster.
So go see it. You probably won't get around to it once it's on video, right? It's one of those biography movies that'll fade from memory. Come on, it's in Kirkland now! And then if he doesn't win the Oscar you can claim he was robbed and know what you're talking about.
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