Infamous (2006)

And then, Sigourney Weaver whipped out her flamethrower...

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about Infamous is that it comes less than a year after Capote. Both movies centre around the figure of Truman Capote, the high society author and wit who would write a mostly unlikely serious book about a murder in Kansas, and create an enduring piece of art and non-fiction writing that effectively destroyed him as an author. Both movies cover the same period of events, from Capote reading about the murders in a New York newspaper to shortly after the execution of the murderers, with Capote achieving his literary mission but ending up as a broken man haunted by intellectual and emotional exertions he made in order to get the book done.

But as the saying goes, sometimes it does take a person to do the exact same thing for spectators to realise how differently it can be done. And sometimes, it takes a movie like Infamous to show that despite its Oscar win, Capote wasn't the perfect story about Truman Capote and the writing of In Cold Blood. Watching Infamous, it is apparent that Capote was a self-consciously Serious Drama - it's like a moral play on film (Does the author lose his soul in his dealings with the murderers? Did he do greater symbolic violence to them then they did to their 4 victims?), shot entirely in a cinematic style with Big Movie angles, film stocks and colour tones, and having a tight focus on the cold-blooded author. You'll notice there are no such pretensions with Infamous - it's filmed in a mix of a naturalistic style and a comedy, and has a far wider focus, prefering to focus on Capote as a part of New York high society than the solitary artistic individual.

While it is true that Infamous tells the same story, it's completely different. For one thing, it's not a work of Great Art like Capote, but a risky and gutsy movie. Take for example, its propensity to poke gentle fun at how ridiculous Truman Capote must have appeared even in his day while laughing along with his jokes and witticisms about his friends, acquaintances, and hosts in Kansas, or perhaps the faux interview segments with his society friends, presumably made years after the publication of In Cold Blood - and there you have the essence of the complex comic style of the movie - it's an impressionistic collage of one man - and his friends, told as a "reality comedy" instead of a moral play, more interested in telling the truth about what a silly, conceited, entertaining, ridiculous, and clever man who had lots of other silly, conceited, ridiculous, but more respectable friends. When you look at it this way, you might see that Truman Capote was flattened into a solitary tragic hero in Capote, whereas in this movie Tobey Jones plays the Truman Capote that we remember and love, the awfully funny, witty, and one-of-a-kind queen who was everyone's closest friend, and the supplier of amusing gossip of his best friends. It's really a matter of taste whether one prefers a movie that tells the truth or a movie that tells The Truth.

It's not such a bad idea to build a movie on small slices of dramedy, and Infamous succeeds best when it does not strive for the dramatic moment or strive to create a literary effect. However, as history would dictate, Capote does meet the killers, gets obsessed with Perry Smith, and destroy himself in high Greek tragedy style. I personally felt that the change in gears is almost jarring at times and doesn't quite gell with the dramedy elements of the movie, although when Douglas McGrath wants this movie to be serious, he does succeeds fairly easy. There's a scene in the prison cell that will convince you why Philip Seymour Hoffman was severely hampered by his size, as well as shock you into the sudden realisation that Infamous is fundamentally different in its treatment of Perry Smith than Capote. I wouldn't want to spoil it for my readers, but suffice to say that it again shows the literariness of Capote and contrasts it with the emotionally more realistic style of Infamous.

I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who had watched Truman Capote on television or was highly entertained by his short stories and adventures in high society, and wondered how he could possibly have been the same man who wrote In Cold Blood.

First published at incinemas on 24 May 2007

Capote (DVD) (2006)

The year is 1959. Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is an up-and-coming author of popular short stories and captivating conversationalist who rubs shoulders with celebrities, fellow authors, critics and tycoons from New York society and beyond. On 15 November, he chances upon an article in the newspaper: four members of a family in Kansas were brutally murdered. Like Gustav Flaubert reading of a tragic suicide in the papers, Capote smells an opportunity to write something ground-breaking and important. Capote persuades William Shawn, his editor (Bob Balaban) at the New Yorker magazine, to fund a trip to Kansas to research for an article on the murders.

Within 6 years, the murderers will be executed, Capote will publish In Cold Blood, a bestseller that would turn him into a household name. Yet shortly after, Capote would become a withdrawn recluse and slide into alcoholism, never to complete another work. Did Truman Capote profit from the killers, their trial and execution? Did he manipulate, then betray the real-life subjects for his "non-fiction novel"? Was this what haunted the author for the rest of his life?

This film provides no easy answers, and virtually every character is in a hell of their own devising, facing dilemmas of their own construction.

Read original film review here

DVD Visuals

Somewhat disappointing is the presence of frequent black dirt and white lines from the film print that got transferred to the DVD without any cleanup. While not earthshakingly bad, these occur somewhat frequently, and in the same areas of the screen.

The very muted and washed out palette that cinematographer Adam Kimmel uses is reproduced faithfully, although it feels to me that projecting it on a cloth screen in a cinema produces a cleaner and less washed out colour tone than watching it on a television screen at home.

Extras

Answered Prayers

Capote is an award winning film, and everyone involved in the features are thankfully free of the compulsive need to play up the importance, artistic value or cleverness of the movie, unlike the DVD features of other less acclaimed movies. What you get is a no-nonsense, fluff-free, dispassionate look at the historical figure of Truman Capote, his novel In Cold Blood, and his long correspondence with the real-life killers. Interviews with his biographers and contemporaries flesh out the very flawed but very personable man, while a short video clip of the author should dispel criticisms that Hoffman merely did a mime job – the real Truman Capote lisped much more and spoke in an even higher pitched whine-drawl.

Making Capote

The filmmakers definitely put a lot of thought and preparation even before principal photography began for the movie. Their conceptualisation and extensive planning for the movie more than warrants the 45 minute documentary, which can be viewed in 2 sittings.

Commentaries

Best enabled after you have watched the film/DVD at least twice, as Hoffman, Miller and Kimmer reveal in detail how they constructed the film character of Capote, as well as the look and feel of each scene. These commentaries are worth the viewing, considering how much a work of art the film is.

Capote (2005)

Truman Capote is more mad, bad, and dangerous than the killer he befriends

Hollywood has a long tradition of making films about artists. The combination of their genius, eccentricities, huge ego, self-destructive neuroses and troubled relationships makes for good storytelling, netting acclaim and awards for directors and actors over the years.

The year is 1959. Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is an up-and-coming author of popular short stories and captivating conversationalist who rubs shoulders with celebrities, fellow authors, critics and tycoons from New York society and beyond. On 15 November, he chances upon an article in the newspaper: four members of a family in Kansas were brutally murdered. Like Gustav Flaubert reading of a tragic suicide in the papers, Capote smells an opportunity to write something ground-breaking and important. Capote persuades William Shawn, his editor (Bob Balaban) at the New Yorker magazine, to fund a trip to Kansas to research for an article on the murders.

With his natural charm and practical legwork from his friend and assistant Harper Lee (Catherine Keener) – yes, the same Harper Lee who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird – Capote wins the trust of the townspeople, the cooperation of the sheriff, and strikes up a close friendship with Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr) and Dick Hickcock (Mark Pelligreno).

In 1848 a short article appeared in newspapers in Normandy. A 20-year-old woman, disillusioned with her stagnating marriage, runs up huge debts on her shopping bills and begins an affair. Under severe emotional and financial pressure, she commits suicide by swallowing arsenic, leaving behind a daughter and a grieving husband.

Gustav Flaubert reads the article, and unable to shake it off his memory, takes 6 years to write Madame Bovary, the novel that would establish him as the most important French author of his day.

Within 6 years, the murderers will be executed, Capote will publish In Cold Blood, a bestseller that would turn him into a household name. Yet shortly after, Capote would become a withdrawn recluse and slide into alcoholism, never to complete another work. Did Truman Capote profit from the killers, their trial and execution? Did he manipulate, then betray the real-life subjects for his “non-fiction novel”? Was this what haunted the author for the rest of his life?

What is the obligation of the non-fiction writer to his living subjects? Miller takes his time to set up, brick by brick, wall by wall, the ethical dilemma that the eponymous character finds himself trapped in.

Capote the writer is bound by several rules of his enterprise. In order for his book to be well-written and successful, Capote needs to find out everything that happened on the night of 15 November. Newspaper reports being moralistic, sensationalist and unforgiving towards the fallen, Capote feels honour-bound to present the true face of the killers, while resisting the temptation to be their spokesperson and apologist. He tells Perry Smith in a prison visit, “If I leave here without understanding you, the world will see you as a monster.”

Unsympathetic and quick to condemn? If the newspapers had come across these characters, we might not see any redeeming feature in them.

Othello - "Love-crazed Immigrant Kills Senator’s Daughter"
Madame Bovary - "Shopaholic Adulteress Swallows Arsenic After Fraud"
Oedipus Rex - "Sex With Mum was Blinding!"

On the other hand, both killers understand their doomed situation. Being published in a best-seller would be a kind of immortality for them, and a chance to speak from their cells and graves.

The negotiation between the author and the killer is deftly executed by Hoffman and Collins. Hoffman’s Capote sees Perry as a victim deserving of pity, and even manages to identity with the killer; their bonding and mutual respect provides solace for both men’s personal problems. Like the narrator of One Thousand and One Nights, the prisoner reveals the truth piece by piece, so that Capote would have to return for more.

Keener’s no-nonsense Lee Harper knows Capote much better than the unsuspecting Perry. “Do you hold him in esteem, Truman?” she asks in a penetrating moment, and the professional writer is defensive: “Well, he’s a gold mine.” Even as Capote’s professional interests begin to affect how he treats the killers, Hoffman portrays the author as an essentially likeable man caught in an ethical and moral struggle, a lonely dandy full of love for himself, yet hungrier for the love of the public.

Having profited – in terms of popularity and acclaim as a groundbreaking writer – from his public readings and sale of In Cold Blood, was Capote a greater monster than Perry? The film offers no easy answers; like how Capote saw Perry Smith, Miller refuses to condemn the author, choosing instead to humanise the flawed man.

First published in incinemas