Capote and Loggerheads
In the fall of 1959, writer Truman Capote, after reading a short news story in The New York Times about the killing of four members of a well-to-do Kansas farming family, decided to write about the subsequent investigation. Thus began an emotionally complex journey that was both torturous and exhilarating for the diminutive gay southern writer.
Capote, the movie that follows the process, is just as complex and steeped in detail—and at its center is the note-perfect performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the title role. Hoffman's breathtaking feat, stunning though it is, is not unexpected—has there yet been a role that this amazing actor has not brought off with spectacular results? The surprise is the assured direction of Bennett Miller and the richly detailed script by Dan Futterman, both making their feature debuts. The three—friends since their college days—have collaborated on what is easily one of the best films of the year.
Our first glimpse of Capote is—naturally—at a cocktail party tossing off a quip and nursing a drink. Next we see him reading about the Clutter family murders and without hesitation deciding to write about the case. But what Capote didn't know was that within the discovery of his great writer's find—what was to become the literary sensation In Cold Blood—lay the seeds of his own personal and artistic devastation. But we know it and it informs each scene of the movie as it follows Capote jumping feet first into the fire to get the story.
As he headed to conservative Kansas Capote, nobody's fool, took along Harper Lee ( Catherine Keener ) , his fellow southern writer, to help smooth the suspicion he knew he would encounter. Keener, who has specialized in playing cynical bitches, matches every Hoffman affectation with steely, guarded assurance. She's the quiet eye to Hoffman's storm. Eventually, she helps Capote win over the townspeople and the flinty lead investigator, Alvin Dewey ( Chris Cooper in yet another of his rigid performances—the movie's only false step ) .
When the two killers are captured and put on trial, Capote immediately finds a rapport with one of them, Perry Smith ( Clifton Collins, Jr. ) . As the movie tells it, the two recognized something in each other from their first meeting. 'It's as if Perry and I grew up in the same house and one day he stood up and went out the back door and I went out the front,' Capote comments. In order to finish his book, he needs the cooperation of the killers and the movie makes it plain that by helping with their defense and softening up Smith with art supplies and other niceties, he got it.
The transitory trust that exists between interviewer and subject is explored and the movie plainly shows us that Capote the journalist wasn't above using his subjects at will. When things turn ugly he lies in order to get what he needs ( it's inherent in the interview process to begin with ) . But the emotional toll on the writer, already beginning a decline into alcoholism, becomes excruciating. Finally, after witnessing the hanging of Smith, a bereft Capote calls the guarded Lee who quietly tells him in so many words that he knew the emotional risks from day one and would have to suffer the consequences ( boy, did he ever ) .
The movie implies that on a certain level Smith knew what Capote was up to: 'I could kill you if you got too close,' he whispers sexily through the bars to a breathless Truman upon their first contact. Capote was drawn to rough trade and in Perry Smith he found the pinnacle of that particular bent. The movie doesn't hint at what many other sources have—that Capote and Smith were lovers while Perry was incarcerated—but it doesn't have too. It's plain that Capote can't help being drawn to the edge of the fire.
Appropriately, Capote is filmed in somber shades of brown, dark blue and gray and has one of those in-vogue Thomas Newman American Beauty-like piano scores by Michael Danna emphasizing the unsaid internal dramas of the characters. Though the film contrasts Capote's sophisticated lifestyle with that of the white-trash killers and their small town, Midwestern victims, it's a very closed-in movie that subconsciously shows ALL the characters imprisoned in some fashion. Credit for that goes to director Miller ( who has worked as a cinematographer ) and his close collaborator, Dan Futterman, the actor perhaps best known for playing Will Truman's boyfriend on Will & Grace, who based his script on the excellent Capote biography by Gerald Clarke.
Hoffman's beautifully sustained performance—which quickly shoots past the easily imitated Capote mannerisms—is one of his richest in a steady lengthening gallery. Capote, a movie about the creation of its subject's greatest work is, rightfully, going to win Hoffman and company a raft of prizes. Hard to believe but this is something Capote himself was denied. Almost 40 years after the debut of In Cold Blood, the irascible writer would surely feel justification and delight at the bouquets of praise that will greet this movie. Perry Smith and the Clutter family, harder to say.
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Loggerheads, which plays for one week at Landmark Century Centre Cinema, is the perfect example of a perfect 'little movie.' The movie crisscrosses between three separate stories in three different years. Beginning in 1999, we follow Mark ( Kip Pardue ) , a young, blonde, handsome drifter, who has arrived on the North Carolina coast to try to help save the loggerhead turtles who return where they were born to lay their eggs. He begins a tentative romance with George ( Michael Kelly ) , a dark-haired motel owner.
A year later we find Elizabeth ( Tess Harper ) , the wife of a strict preacher ( Chris Sarandon ) consumed with guilt by the fact that her adopted gay son has run away from their conservative home. Finally, in 2001, we meet Grace ( Bonnie Hunt ) who is living with her mother ( Michael Learned ) while slowly recovering from a suicide attempt because she is haunted by the son that she gave up as a teenager.
Naturally, Mark is the linchpin for all three stories, which slowly entwine as the film progresses. There's not a false moment in this poignant movie ( though the turtle metaphor is a touch forced ) . Gay writer-director Tim Kirkman is rewarded by his uniformly excellent cast while Harper and Hunt are standouts. These are parts that actors dream about and Kirkman has given the audience something that WE dream about, too—one of those perfectly little miraculous cinematic experiences that are far and few between.
See www.landmarktheatres.com .
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Web site of note: The complete lineup of this year's films for Reeling 2005: The 24th Chicago Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival are now online.
The site also lists the special events and a new membership program for the fest. Tickets for the fest go on sale Oct. 22nd.
See www.reelingfilmfestival.org .
