The Truman Doctrine
Philip Seymour Hoffman Leads Oscar Race with Perfect Portrayal

Today it seems as if every other popular prime time television show deals with murder and mayhem featuring stories “ripped from today’s headlines.” Ditto for movies and best-selling books. No one even thinks twice when their favorite mild-mannered aunt has a passion for reading novels filled with grisly crime scenes and graphic autopsies. That’s entertainment!

In one disturbing sequence, author Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman, right) brings fashion photographer Richard Avedon to Kansas to take pictures of convicted murderers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, left).

But it wasn’t always that way. Four decades ago Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood shot to the top of the best-seller list and literally changed the way we view the novel form. Based on an actual news account—the murder of the Clutter family in rural Kansas—Capote wrote it in a style usually reserved for fiction, with plenty of conversational passages and a marked poetic flair.

In Cold Blood paved the way for Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter books, movies such as Seven and Natural Born Killers, and the whole CSI, Law & Order trend that currently dominates network television.

The new movie Capote captures the pivotal point in the writer’s life when he first finds out about the murders and travels with his friend and fellow novelist Harper Lee to Kansas to cover the story for New Yorker magazine. When he discovers a town brought to its knees by the tragedy and a sudden exclusive access to the two men accused of the farmhouse murder he decides to make it the basis of his next book. It’s a far cry from the subject of his previous book, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, and his involvement with murderers and their victims alters his perception of reality while at the same time catapulting him as a writer to newfound heights of fame.

Capote stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as the effeminate southern writer Truman Capote while Catherine Keener plays his traveling companion and secretary Nelle Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird. Hoffman studied films of Capote and perfectly captures the author’s child-like voice, fey mannerisms and outrageous ego. Remember, if you will, that forty years ago Capote was one of the few openly gay personalities to be embraced by the mainstream media and he made multiple appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Hoffman inhabits Capote’s over-sized personality and shows how he was able to charm Manhattan society and Leavenworth Prison authorities with the same unflappable ease.

As Capote interviews Richard Hickock (Mark Pellegrino) and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins), the two convicted killers awaiting the death penalty, his book changes from a story about murder into a concise personality profile of small time crooks who graduate to the big time with one pull of the trigger. He becomes obsessed with hearing the details of the night at the Clutter farm and his book’s future depends on how much the two—particularly Perry—will divulge. To get the story, Capote stoops to outright lies and deliberately squashes an attempt to find them a new lawyer for their appeal.

As compelling as the story is, it is the performances of the actors in Capote that make it one of the best films in recent memory. Hoffman is great and has a strong chance of running away with the Academy Award for Best Actor this weekend. But it is the actors supplying the supporting roles that push this film over the top. Collins is magnificent as the quietly intellectual Perry Smith, with just enough rage simmering below the surface that the viewer can believe him capable of the heinous murder. Chris Cooper is magnificent as Kansas Bureau of Investigation Agent Alvin Dewey who befriends Capote and Lee while tracking down the killers. And Keener should be a frontrunner for Best Supporting Actress as Harper Lee, Capote’s polar opposite and the voice of reason and humanity during his fall from (relative) sobriety and grace.

It is interesting that after the events leading up to the publication of In Cold Blood, neither Capote nor Lee ever wrote another novel.

As the Oscar race comes down to the bell lap, it must be said that while Munich and Brokeback Mountain are very good movies, Capote is a great one. As a biography of a complex celebrity and a period piece it is nearly flawless. The story, with its life and death consequences, is riveting and the performances from every actor in the cast are head and shoulders above most of the Oscar contenders. Along with Good Night, And Good Luck, Capote is the best drama committed to celluloid this past year.

Capote is rated R for some violent images and brief strong language. It is playing at area theaters in North Carolina.