October 2005
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
Truman Capote was called a lot of things but stupid was not one of them. His fierce intelligence, wit, and writing skills, are well remembered long after he ceased to function. Already well established in the Fifties as a writer and raconteur with his social exploits, short story collections, and a book later made into a movie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), his legacy really began in November of 1959 when he read an article in the NY Times regarding a murdered family in Kansas. He immediately sensed the potential to investigate this heinous crime and its effect on the community of Holcomb, Kansas, and create a new genre of the nonfiction novel that would leave his mark on literature. He didn’t know at the time that the book would take six years to research and write and that his formidable intelligence would ultimately succumb to the pressures of holding two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time. It is this paradox that informs his seminal work, In Cold Blood, and afterward led to an extended period of decline, alcoholism and untimely death. This duality is also the theme that sustains the film, Capote, which documents the period between 1959 and 1965, when In Cold Blood was realized, and stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as the legendary Truman Capote. Capote the movie is also to Hoffman the actor, what the book In Cold Blood was to Capote the writer: the masterwork of a master artist at the top of his game.
“When I think how good my book can be I can hardly breathe.” Truman Capote
Conceived, written, directed and produced by three longtime friends: screenwriter Dan Futterman, director Bennett Miller, and actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote is distinguished by its many dualities. From the opening close-ups of flowing wheat stalks, to fields, twisted trees, a lone farmhouse and a girl entering to discover a horrific death scene, we are transported to a NYC skyline at dusk where we go inside to a party where Capote is holding court in the shadows. He name-drops the writer James Baldwin and his new novel about “a negro homosexual who’s in love with a Jew.” We are hereby introduced to 1959 and racism (white/black, gay/straight, Jew/gentile), celebrity, and at least two of the cultures (NYC/Kansas) that will mesh and collide in the ensuing narrative. The rural/urban, day/night, earth/sky, interior/exterior, good/evil, love/hate, rich/poor, rejection/acceptance, Apollo/Dionysus dichotomy is sustained through visual and verbal snapshots as Truman Capote travels back and forth from the farmhouse to the penthouse, the country and the city, compiling his six thousand pages of notes that will lead to the book. As Capote goes on assignment with The New Yorker magazine and takes the train, with his “research assistant and personal bodyguard”, Harper Lee (female author of To Kill a Mockingbird) to Kansas and the murder scene, the real dichotomy between the ordered Apollonian world of letters and civilization clashes head on with the opposing Dionysian forces of anarchy and murder. The illusion of the American dream is tested by the darkness of the American nightmare as the artist, Capote, meets up with his doppelganger, the criminal, in the form of Perry Smith. It is their relationship, both in drama and in life, which will drive the plot, reveal the characters, and sustain the theme as this modern Greek tragedy unfolds.
“Hickock and Smith became very, very good friends of mine – perhaps the closest friends I’ve ever had in my life.” Truman Capote (Playboy, March, 1968.)
Apollo is ego, reason, order, mind, restraint, system, masculine, city, classicism and civilization. Dionysus is id, emotion, chaos, heart, excess, spontaneity, feminine, country, romanticism and nature. These are the two worlds that intersect as Truman Capote arrives in Kansas and begins his investigation. We are first introduced to the locals and their mixed responses to having a celebrity writer from the city in their midst as Capote searches for a story. We are witness to Capote’s intelligence, curiosity, “ninety-four percent verbal recall” and ambition as he interviews witnesses, views the bodies, and befriends the local authorities. An accomplished writer at work he uses everything in his arsenal to expose the truth and find the story. Once the murder suspects, Smith and Hickock, have been apprehended and Capote has his first meeting with Perry Smith, he instinctively knows that he has truly found his destiny; “The book I was always meant to write.” He calls in the eminent fashion photographer, Richard Avedon, to take pictures of the two men and is a fixture in the courtroom when the death penalty is imposed. Referring to Perry Smith as a “goldmine”, Capote seizes the opportunity to expose the mind of a murderer while he awaits their execution. He is also irresistibly attracted to Smith, both as a homosexual and as a kindred spirit who was similarly abandoned as a child. He brings him books, Thoreau and Santanya, feed him pears when he is weak from a hunger strike, exchanges life stories, and generally “humanizes the monster” while he probes for salacious details of the murders and waits impatiently for the hangman’s noose so he can provide an ending for his book. Smith has to die so the book can be born. When Smith finally opens up about the night of the murders and talks about his feelings towards Mr. Cutter before he slits his throat, he says, “This nice man is scared of me. I was so ashamed.” Capote sees himself and his own rejection by his father in Smith and he essentially falls in love with him. Like Apollo and Dionysus, the artist and the criminal, they are two sides of the same coin. Capote went out the front door and Smith went out the back. This bond and emotional investment versus the need to finish the book that was going to “change everything”, are the two opposed ideas that Capote struggles to balance. He succeeds in the short term but his writing career is to go no further. After witnessing the hanging, Capote remarks on the phone, “I’ll never get over it” and it seems he never did. With the exception of four chapters of an unfinished book, Answered Prayers, and other scattered pieces, Truman Capote alienated most everyone he knew before dying of liver failure in 1984.
“I’m 43, so perhaps, if luck allows and discipline holds, I will have time to arrive at higher altitudes, where the air is thin but the view exhilarating.” Truman Capote (Playboy, March, 1968.)
Capote is five accomplished films in one. The writing, screenplay by Dan Futterman based on the biography by Gerald Clarke, is assured and unified, the casting which includes Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr., Chris Cooper, Bruce Greenwood and Mark Pellegrino is profound, the direction by Bennett Miller is consistent and eloquent, the cinematography by Adam Kimmel is balanced and articulate, and the editing by Christopher Tellefsen is invisible. Capote will be most remembered and celebrated for the performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote. The actor as auteur, Hoffman creates a character that transcends imitation and impersonation. In the same way Capote felt an affinity with Perry Smith, Hoffman has tapped into the psychology of the writer and plays a first rate intelligence capitulating to the bitch goddess of success with such quiet authority that we understand the paradox and feel the emotional consequences. Everything revolves around his convincing and tortuous journey as he relives the actual birth of a book and the symbolic death of its creator. Duality is the crux of drama and the sustenance of the actor. Philip Seymour Hoffman delivers both Apollo and Dionysus, the two opposing forces of creation, and unlike his character in Capote, we eagerly anticipate his ascent to higher altitudes. This is surely the role he was meant to play.
