Buckeye Road

Not Exactly Flawless

I broke down and saw Capote over the weekend. I'll say that it was, on the whole, better than I expected, at least from the nasty things some of my friends had said about it. A big part of this, of course, is Catherine Keener, who lifts up any film whose screen she graces.

Generally, I agree with the sentiments expressed here. (And, with his takedown of Munich and cushy Kushner, he's fast becoming a new favorite blogger.)

My favorite moment of Hoffman's miscasting is when he finally goes to meet his roommate Jack in Spain. For the first time, he's wearing a short sleeve shirt and crosses his arms in front of his chest. These arms are not Capote's arms but Hoffman's, incongruously beefed up and hairy.

The filmmakers do their best to play down the burly Hoffman's physical mismatch to the slight Capote. Shot after shot frames him from odd angles, as if he is all head and shoulders and the occasional upraised pinkie. Medium shots are few and far between.

Even having read the critical reviews, I was surprised at what a retrograde film this was. The relationship between Capote and his roommate Jack is entirely sexless. They never kiss and barely even touch except for one moment in the park, as one reaches behind the other just as the camera cuts away. There is a moment where it appears that Capote is heading into a nondescript bar with a red light over the door -- when a man outside the bar makes eye contact with him before going in, all while he talks on the phone with Jack, who wants him to come to Spain. I guess this is all supposed to mean Something but it is all so opaque and indirect that it is undecipherable.

My point is, except for these coupla moments, if you did not know Capote was gay, your only hints would be his strange voice and swishy behavior. In terms of depicting a central gay character, this film could well have been made in the era in which it's set.

I'm going to try and see Brokeback again next weekend, with at least one (and hopefully both) of my parents, and then I'll do my post on that. I'll say now that there is no question in my mind that Heath Ledger should rightly beat Philip Seymour Hoffman for the Best Actor Oscar, on the sole basis of their work in the films for which they're nominated. I'll be depressed if yet another trophy is given for an impression of a famous person (even when they go to actors I like, like Jamie Foxx and especially the glorious Cate Blanchett).

However, I know that that's not how Oscar voting works. Cate should have won for Elizabeth (instead of that scrawny Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love). And Ledger's case isn't helped by schlock like Casanova and the execrable A Knight's Tale (if you stayed through the end credits, you know I mean that literally).

Which brings us back to one of my other favorite film actresses, Catherine Keener. Her Harper Lee was Capote's conscience in the film, which I thought was pitch perfect (whether or not this was the case in real life). We get her before and after the publication of the novel that made her name and defined racism for generations of American schoolchildren. How perfect is it to cast the author of To Kill a Mockingbird as the voice of liberal conscience?

Her great work also turned on a legal case, and she's a moral force in the film, most especially at the end, when she calls up Capote in Kansas after receiving a telegram from the killer he lied to and charmed to get book material but has since dropped because his book needs an ending that can only come with the executions. He's in Kansas, but, apparently racked with guilt (not fully drawn out in the film), he's holed up in his hotel and won't read the telegram or answer the phone. But the killer has telegramed "Miss Nell Harper Lee" along with his friend Truman, and she insists that his agent hold the telephone to Truman's ear to make him listen to her reading the telegram.

It's a calling to account for what Capote has done, as he found a lawyer to file the killers' appeals, dragging out the case for years. When that lawyer quit, Capote tells them he'll find another, only to write them a letter saying he couldn't without having tried. And then, of course, there is the lying about the title of the book, which he comes up with quite early on, but he continues to tell Perry Smith, the killer he's charmed, that he has no idea of the title, and has barely written anything. The killers are hoping his book will help them get off on an insanity defense, while Capote is buying time to get Smith to tell him the whole story.

Clifton Collins Jr. is quite a treat as Perry Smith, with his wounded lost little boy eyes and childish courtroom drawings juxtaposing his beefcake tattoos and alleged misdeeds. I had forgotten the details of the case, and the film did do a nice job of drawing out the false romance (if I can call it that) between Smith and Capote, as one dreams of getting out of prison, and the other dreams of finishing the greatest book ever. Thus it comes as a brutal shock when Smith finally tells Capote the story of What Happened That Night, that he was the one who killed all four of the Clutters.

And Collins also gets the film's darkest moment. Asked on the gallows for his last words, he goes into a few lines about how he doesn't know what to say. Like Capote, we recognize this from Smith's journal as his dreamed-up speech "If Called Upon to Accept an Award."

I suppose there is some uncertainty-principle-like point about artists changing the things they observe by getting too close to them. The filmmakers of Capote, however, have not really drawn this out. Like most else in the film except Hoffman's Method acting and Keener's moral clarity, it remains undecipherable.

posted by BT @ 12:53 PM