Capote

It's bio-pic season. Capote eschews the standard birth-to-death story arc, instead concentrating on the critical years when Truman Capote worked on his non-fiction masterpiece, "In Cold Blood". The difficult task of humanizing our hero is handled wonderfully by Philip Seymour Hall -- one of those impersonations which seems to transcend acting, as Jamie Foxx's "Ray" did too.

Previous versions of "In Cold Blood" (a 1967 movie (starring apparently real-life killer Robert Blake) and a 1996 TV version ) chose to simply tell the story of the fruitless robbery, capture, and execution of the uncaring murderers. The real story, which comes across as you read the book, is Capote's relationship to one of them, Perry Smith.

But the film makes abundently clear that Truman's insterest was not that of a friend; rather, he manipulates Perry (and his friends) in order to get what he wants. Capote is, like Mozart in "Amadeus", not that nice a person.

The only problem with the film is it's consistently down-beat tone. Granted this is the stuff of serious sadness. And we do see flashes of the witty, funny, entertaining Capote as he holds sway at parties. Still, the eventual execution of the killers, which mirrors Capote's self-discovery of is own corruption, is moody and drawn-out, to say the least.