Capote Review

Bennett Miller shows with Capote that he is a director comfortable working in close-ups. Not every director has enough faith in the actors or the material to let the camera simply gaze at the characters for long periods of time. Jonathan Demme uses close-ups better than anybody, but where his close-ups reveal affection for the characters Miller utilizes them in Capote to make the viewer get inside the protagonist's head. Truman Capote was, among other things, an outstanding observer. He was able to retain and ascertain many details about people and places just from interacting with them. A viewer of this film begins to see the world of the film exactly as Capote would have observed them. The performers come through with riveting, subtle performances. Philip Seymour Hoffman is arguably the best actor at this moment (a post on that later) and he is flawless as Capote. Getting the distinct voice right was simply half the battle. Hoffman gets at the psychological truth of this deeply flawed man, and plays every aspect of his outsized personality. He is matched subtlety for subtlety by Catherine Keener who is given the moral authority in the film. It has been a pleasure this year to watch her play roles (The Interpreter, The 40 Year Old Virgin) that allow her to get away from the stereotypical Keener part. Capote is the kind of movie that steadily and totally gets the viewer inside the head of its protagonist, but remarkably it simultaneously lets the viewer keep a sense of perspective that never makes his worse aspects at all sympathetic.