Monday, March 24, 2008

Movie Review- Capote

“You must be really desperate for your story…” thus said an imprisoned murderer to an award-winning homosexual journalist.

Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) was one eager journalist who wanted to write a non-fiction novel touching an angle about murders, after reading a newstory at the back of the New York Times. Having Kansas as the location of his subjects, he traveled there for an assignment from The New Yorker magazine.

Accompanied by his friend, Nell Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), Truman Capote started his research about the murder case in Kansas and found himself befriending two of the murderers, Dick Hickock (Mark Pelligrino) and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.). Hoffman’s interpretation of Truman Capote’s role in the movie is exceptional. He has to project a very high-pitched voice to emphasize his being gay. Fueled by his desire to accomplish his assignment as a journalist, famous Truman Capote scheduled meetings with the prisoners in order to conduct first-hand interviews even inside their prison cells. His study about the case eventually became his classic novel, In Cold Blood.

Capote, released in September 30, 2005, is a movie about a veteran homosexual journalist who tried to write something so different during his time. He wanted to write a non-fiction that can be as compelling as fiction.

Directed by Bennett Miller, this movie was released seven years after his first project, the little-seen but much acclaimed documentary The Cruise. Together with his friend, an actor and a novice writer, Danny Futterman, Miller conceived the idea of writing Capote.

The film brings us back in November in the year 1959. Vast area of grass field with a single house standing in the midst opens the picture, suggesting an isolated and a melancholic mood of the story. Most of the scenes come in cold, a little background music, or none at all. Every scene is portrayed in a low-paced rhythm. It’s as if every movement has to be captured by the camera. Running for almost two hours, Capote used silence and dialogues to balance the movie.

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