Cold-blooded 'Capote'

November 2, 2005

The caption on the screen tells us it is Nov. 14, 1959 as artistically photographed shafts of wheat frame a Kansas farmhouse. A '54 Chevy is idling out front with a driver at the wheel. A young girl heads up the steps, knocks, and then opens the front door. She doesn't bother to check if the door is locked. Out here, people don't feel the need to lock their doors. She calls out, then heads upstairs, still calling her friend's name. But it is silent. There can be no reply, for her friend is tied up in bed with much of her head splattered against the wall. Murder has come to this house. Murder in cold blood.

A few days later, in far-off Manhattan, Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a writer for the New Yorker magazine, clips the brief article about the murder from The Times and calls his editor (Bob Balaban). "Did you see the article about the murders in Kansas?" he asks. "I've decided to write about this crime and I need some things. First, some money ..."

Arriving late at the Pullman railway car, he apologizes to his longtime friend Harper Lee (Catherine Keener) who he has taken on as his researcher and assistant. The porter arrives with several large pieces of luggage and as he leaves, he comments on what an honor it is to have Mr. Capote on his train and then congratulates him on his latest book.

"You paid him and told him what to say," Harper Lee says. Shaking his head in denial, Capote at least has the manners to blush as he asks. "What gave it away?"

Oddly, this self-absorbed man headed to a place where he was a virtual unknown. Arriving unannounced in the office of Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper), Capote openly says he doesn't much care if they catch the murderers. "Well, I sure care," Dewey responds and we later learn that he has a deputy travel to another state to buy a copy of Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffanys" since it is banned in Kansas.

Sharing a holiday meal at the Deweys' house, the turkey carving is interrupted by a phone call from the Las Vegas Chief of Police. The killers, Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino), have been captured. Returned to Kansas, they are quickly tried and convicted and sentenced to death. Capote heads out to the penitentiary where the warden tells him of the favor he has done for Smith. "He's half Indian but I decided to put him with the white folks."

"You're very kind," Capote says in his squeaky Southern drawl. "I'll need unlimited access to the prisoners and since I understand that this extra burden shouldn't be placed upon the good citizens of Kansas, I've brought this ..." Then Capote hands a fat envelope of bills to the warden who checks the money and nods his assent.

Discovering that Smith is on a hunger strike, Capote buys him baby food and spoon-feeds him back to health. Their relationship is the heart of this movie. Each wants something from the other, and each is willing to reveal a bit of themselves to get it. "You know, we're not so different as you might think," Capote tells Smith as he shares stories from his childhood.

There is an attraction between the two men which we first think of as sexual, but Capote understands it is more than that. Smith is also his gateway to the acclaimation he desperately craves. Friendship or not, he convinces Smith that he can prove to the world he's not a monster if he will just share his personal photos and notebooks for the book. Capote can't help later but bubble over on the phone to Harper Lee, "It's a gold mine, a gold mine." But the notebooks offer a new level of insight as well. "It's as if we were raised in the same house," Capote confesses to his lifetime friend. "Only he left by the back door and I went out the front."

Complex, spare, yet richly textured, utterly fascinating, and extremely well acted by all involved, "Capote" is my bet as a movie that deserves multiple Oscar nominations this year.

(Gil Mansergh's Screenings column appears in the Argus-Courier every other week. E-mail comments to gilmansergh@comcast.net.)