Phillip Seymour Hoffman metamorphoses before our eyes, in a portrayal of the late author Truman Capote, who forever changed the writing world with, as he called it “the first non-fiction novel” entitled “In Cold Blood”. And while this movie doesn’t change cinema, it does manage to tap into some emotions revealed, as more of a docu/study, on how ruthless a writer will become to ‘get the story.’ Capote keeps the story alive by keeping his killers alive, through high-priced attorneys, and an ongoing set of appeals. On the flipside, Perry, one of the killers, does the same, first appearing lonely and frightened, but later manipulating Capote with a dangling carrot of holding out information – a means of using the writing project as a legal tool. Hoffman’s character is always and amusingly in a New York State of mind. He’s brutally honest, yet gently sweet and cunning, with a duck-out-of-water ambition, who travels all the way to Kansas, to convince the behind-bars-death-row killers, that they shouldn’t be remembered as ‘monsters’ until, like a monster himself, Capote turns on a dime to defend his project’s outcome.
The parallel of Capote vs. Perry is quite obvious as they merge into unusual but not so unusual soulmates, or as Capote put it, “We were from the same house. Then one day Perry went out the back door and I went out the front.” For better or for worse, a writer bonds with his story until the end; and in the end, Hoffman will win the Oscar for this portrayal. That said, Catherine Keener’s performance as his childhood friend Harper Lee is low key, a peaceful presence, yet loudly supportive, and Chris Copper as the confidential Kansas Bureau agent, is also understated, but a pivotal role. Hoffman may flawlessly deliver the lilting high-pitched words, but it’s Dan Futterman’s screenplay that made the catchy words happen. And while the movie often moves at a snail’s pace, director out-of-nowhere Bennett Miller tosses us head first into the 1950s and 60s, with minimal set design yet consuming us to what that very society, both in Kansas and New York, may have felt like. Four tiaras.