TRUMAN CAPOTE’S JOURNEY ON ‘IN COLD BLOOD,’ AGAIN

By A. O. SCOTT
The New York Times, 10/13/06

Truman Capote is surely a large enough figure — or perhaps I mean small enough — to fill out two motion pictures. Since multiple literary lives are the norm in book publishing, why not in the movies? Capote, a fascinating, sometimes appalling literary celebrity in his lifetime, has been posthumously served by two highly readable biographies, Gerald Clarke’s elegantly written portrait and George Plimpton’s engrossing collage of interviews and recollections. Now those books have served as the scaffolding for cinematic interpretations of part of Capote’s career that are not quite complementary, but also not really in competition with each other. There is no reason to choose between Bennett Miller’s “Capote,” which came out almost exactly a year ago, and Douglas McGrath’s “Infamous,” which opens today. Both concentrate on the period, from the late 1950’s through the mid 60’s, during which Capote researched and wrote “In Cold Blood.” And both stand out above the biopic pack.

“Infamous, ” the picture under consideration here, based on Plimpton’s book, is well worth your attention. It is quick-witted, stylish and well acted. The release of two movies on the same subject is somewhat unusual, and the arrival in close succession of two good movies that tell more or less identical stories, each one distinguished by real intelligence in conception and execution, is downright uncanny.

In Mr. McGrath’s version, Capote is played by Toby Jones as a clever imp of the Manhattan social scene. He describes himself as “a wind-up toy” and is the pet and confidant of a loose network of lunching ladies, including Slim Keith (Hope Davis), Marella Agnelli (Isabella Rossellini) and Babe Paley (a divine Sigourney Weaver, shown above with Jones). Capote’s circle also includes the publisher Bennett Cerf, ebulliently played by Peter Bogdanovich. Capote’s betrayal of his friends’ confidences is habitual, and more naughty than cruel. One day he happens upon a news article about a gruesome quadruple homicide — an entire family slaughtered — in a small Kansas town, and then...

Well, by now we know what happens next. In the company of his friend Nelle Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock, whose mellifluous Alabama accent, like the performance in which it is embedded, is a marvel of observant precision), Capote transplants himself to Holcomb, Kan., where the killings took place. There, some of the locals pretend to mistake him for a woman, while others recognize him as an ambassador from a faraway world of glitter and glamour. He brags that he once beat Humphrey Bogart at arm-wrestling, and his prowess when challenged by some skeptical Kansans is a sign of the strength and ferocity that lie beneath his goosey, fluttering surface.

Capote’s character is illuminated by testimony from actors playing his friends and contemporaries, including a deliciously feline impersonation of the young Gore Vidal by Michael Panes. (When asked what he thought of Capote’s writing, the real Vidal is supposed to have answered, “I have diabetes.”) Jeff Daniels is in fine, low-key form as Alvin Dewey, who leads the investigation of the murders and whose doughty Midwestern masculinity makes him an amusing (and frequently amused) foil for the writer.

Mr. Jones’s impersonation is touching and credible, and his notion of the character is interestingly different from that of Philip Seymour Hoffman, star of “Capote.” In general, “Infamous” is warmer and more tender, if also a bit thinner and showier, than “Capote,” which focused on the deep ethical questions raised by the writing of “In Cold Blood” and emphasized the writer’s cold, manipulative narcissism.

The contrast between the two films is most apparent with respect to Capote’s relationship with Perry Smith, one of the killers and a central character in “In Cold Blood.” Daniel Craig, the next James Bond, endows Smith with a coiled, frightening sexual intensity. Unlike Clifton Collins Jr.’s volatile lost boy in the earlier film, Mr. Craig’s Smith is more predator than prey, even when he’s at Capote’s mercy. Whereas Mr. Miller’s film explored Capote’s power over Smith, Mr. McGrath’s reverses the charge, placing the writer very much in the killer’s thrall.

And also in love with him. The connection between them makes Capote’s ambiguous inability to help Smith and his accomplice, Dick Hickok, as they moved toward execution a matter of weakness rather than callousness. Capote’s book has overwhelmed him, and he is undone as much by sensitivity as by vanity.

“Infamous” is less a parable of literary ethics than a showcase of literary personality, and it is in the end more touching than troubling. It does, however, contain one scene — the very first, as it happens — that is itself a small tour de force. Capote is at the El Morocco with Babe Paley, feasting his eyes and ears on a singer played by Gwyneth Paltrow (who vanishes from the picture as soon as her song is over). In midsong, her voice catches and falters, as if a real surge of bitter, unbidden feeling had disrupted the lyric’s smooth description of heartbreak. The nightclub audience, Capote included, holds its breath: are they witnessing something excruciating and real, or a performance whose mastery resides in its perfect mimicry of authentic, uncontrollable emotion? (And what exactly is the audience in the cinema looking at when we see a movie star playing a singer pretending to be a lovelorn, anonymous woman?)

Some related questions shadow “In Cold Blood,” and for that matter Capote himself. The book is reportage, as he notoriously said, “using the techniques of fiction.” And he himself was an actor in much of his life, adopting a persona that both was and wasn’t his true (so to speak) self. No wonder he has proved so attractive to filmmakers and ambitious actors: he was, supremely and enigmatically, his own invention, and now he’s theirs to reinvent.