The Truman Show Review
Capote
Peter Vesuwalla

I love the moment in Capote in which the titular character, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, casually mentions that for his next project he’s going to invent a new kind of writing.

He says it the way he would casually mention he’s just running out to the store to buy a pack of smokes. The thing is, you believe him when he says it. If he sounded more excited or enthusiastic, you probably wouldn’t.

That’s the great thing about Hoffman’s performance: he captures both Truman Capote’s awkwardness and his allure. He talks, at times, as if he’s in a daze, as if the act of putting together a sentence means pulling words out of the air one at a time while constantly being distracted by other ones. His effeminate voice is heightened by his odd vocal inflection, as if his tongue were just a little too big for his mouth.

Still, the character is spellbinding and knows it. To hear him tell a story at a party is to witness a great performer at the top of his game.

We never catch Hoffman in the act of impersonating the late author. This is a carefully studied performance, right down to the way he adjusts his glasses when he’s trying to emotionally distance himself from a conversation.

Capote’s friends, particularly Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), are willing to put up with the odd bit of excess. But the moral centre for this film is actually one of its more minor characters: Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper), the Kansas sheriff investigating the tragic murder of an entire family, which Capote would eventually use as a basis for his ‘non-fiction novel’ In Cold Blood.

It’s never explicitly spelled out in the film, but something about Cooper’s manner shows he’s not as taken by Capote as everyone else is. Dewey is polite, friendly and professional, but he can sense the writer’s insincerity, perhaps even before the audience can.

A great deal can be read into an impassioned line of dialogue I wrote down before I understood it: “Ever since I was a child, folks have thought they had me pegged because of the way I am, the way I talk,” says Capote. “And they’re always wrong.”

The line takes on a new meaning later, when we catch Capote outright lying to Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), one of the killers who was sentenced to hang. How Capote feels toward Smith is impossible to determine. He says one thing and writes another, helps Smith get an appeal but doesn’t want him to win it, shows sympathy but… I don’t know.

At least he lived up to that promise he made of inventing a new type of writing.