Capote

I was glad to see this film at Images, but unlike most critics do not feel the urge to run out and recommend it to other people. Perhaps I was bothered by the way it, in the manner of Janet Malcolm, made the journalist more reprehensible than the murderer. On the plus side for one who styles himself a writer, the scenes of Truman holding court at Gotham literary cocktail parties were the most enjoyable to me. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is justly celebrated in the title role, and deserves credit for carrying the film of his high school friends, director Bennett Miller and writer Dan Futterman. Two of my favorite actors, Catherine Keener as Harper Lee and Chris Cooper as the chief inspector, contribute perfect supporting roles. The anomaly of Capote in Kansas is nicely handled, but the treatment of the central story, of random and official murder, does not compare in power to Richard Brooks’ 1967 film of In Cold Blood. I admired Capote in a number of ways, but it did not grab me and drag me into real-life horror, except at the writer’s temperament and deceit. (2005, Images, n.) *6+* (MC-89, RT-91.)