The Greatest Trick

Watching Capote brought to mind – of all things – Woody Allen’s superb Bullets over Broadway. Why did this grim, serious drama remind me of a light farcical comedy? I’ll come back to this later.

Director Bennett Miller’s biopic tells how celebrated writer Truman Capote’s most famous novel In Cold Blood came into being. I read In Cold Blood whilst studying English A-level and I must confess for all its undeniable brilliance the novel left me…well, cold. During my studies, I also saw Richard Brooks’ 1967 film adaptation which again was brilliant but cold. Capote however, is a slightly different animal as it deals less with the grisly specifics of the case and more the journalistic and artistic process, which as a writer is of great interest to me.

In 1959, when Capote wrote for The New Yorker, he learnt about the horrific senseless murders of the Clutter family in Kansas. Inspired by the story, Capote and fellow author Harper Lee (her brilliant novel To Kill a Mockingbird had just been released to great acclaim), travel to Kansas to research an article on the effect the killings have had on the local town. However, as Capote digs deeper, he is inspired to write a book. In doing so he arranges interviews with the killers, and takes a particular interest in one of them: Perry Smith.

His apparent compassion for Perry prompts him to find them a lawyer to get them an appeal. However, his true motive for not wanting the killers executed is they have yet to reveal exactly what transpired on the night of the murders. Yet when Perry does finally provide this, Capote is frustrated as his book doesn’t have an ending and despite pangs of conscience, deep down he then wants to see the killers executed so he can complete his masterpiece, even if it is at the cost of his own soul.

As he works on his book, Capote finds he is writing a masterpiece which he calls “the non-fiction book of the decade”. When he says this he isn’t exactly being arrogant, simply stating what he believes to be the truth. And he was right. In Cold Blood was groundbreaking, and unfortunately opened the floodgates for all manner of lesser works – the lurid “true crime” stories that clutter up bookshops these days.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar winning turn is the main reason for seeing this film, and anyone who has seen archive footage of Capote will agree he has completely nailed his speech and mannerisms. Given that he was such a flamboyant homosexual, I am amazed he wasn’t himself murdered by Middle American in-bred thugs before he managed to do an iota of research on his book. Incidentally, Capote’s homosexuality is dealt with matter-of-factly in this film, unlike Brokeback Mountain’s propagandist approach, so there is nothing for Christians to get hot under their dog-collars about. However, some may object to the occasional swearing and brief but brutal and bloody recreations of the murders – necessary in my opinion, but worth warning about nonetheless.

Hoffman’s performance provides an intriguing insight into making of a seminal book, and it asks the question, how far is too far in the pursuit of art? Harper Lee provides the film’s voice of reason, and points out to Capote after the execution finally happens that at least he is still alive. But Capote never really recovered, and didn’t complete another novel right up to his death in 1984.

And here we return to Woody Allen. Bullets over Broadway dealt with the same question, how far is too far in the pursuit of art, with far more wit and entertainment value, than this worthy but sombre film. My good friend Charles Storrar summed up Capote as follows, and I have to say that despite the films undoubted merits, I think he has a point:

“It’s unfair to say the film produces insufficient emotional response. What it provokes above all is a strong desire to punch Truman Capote’s self-serving, self-obsessed, lying, arrogant, bitchy, name-dropping, effeminate, whining face… But since you can’t punch him, you might as well do what my friend did and fall asleep.”

Simon Dillon, March 2006.