Capote

Warning: Reading further will give the movie plot away.

I managed to watch Capote (on DVD which I bought a million years ago) last night, despite being in a semi-zombie state due to the lack of sleep the night before while being on call. The fact that I could watch the entire movie in that state meant that the story was engaging. And truly it was.

In a gist, it’s a ‘based on a true story’ movie, documenting how the main character, Truman Capote revolutionized the way people wrote books in the 1950s by being the first to write a ‘non-fictional’ book. His work (also his last) documented his interview with the convicted killers of a rural family of 4 in Kansas. The book made Capote the ‘most famous writer in America’.

Capote was a gay writer who set out to write what he intuitively felt would be his greatest piece of writing. I found the way he spoke in the movie nothing less than annoying (perhaps that’s why he was an Oscar for it!). In fact it grates on the nerves!

The movie was engaging because here we see a writer bent on getting his story, by any means, even by deception as he deceived the two convicted killer on death row that he was on their side; that he was trying his best to get them the best attorney to get them off the death sentence. And they believed him, they pinned all their hopes on them.

Yet, to the outside world (unknown to the 2 criminals in jail), Capote was this flamboyant person, full of merry-making and vulgarity. He rubbed shoulders with high society people, fine living and all. He boasted about his upcoming book. He talked constantly about how good his book would be. He chose the title of his book – ‘In Cold Blood’. Hardly the best title if one claimed to be on the side of the killers, at least to them anyway.

But his perfect world and his deceptions collided when, in the process of ‘getting into the mind of the criminal’ he became very attached to one of them (Perry Smith) and came to care for him, even to love him.

In the end, he wrote a book that made him famous, yet paradoxically, his book broke him as he grappled with the immense guilt of his deception. He had to watch Perry hung to death. He lamented that “it was the most horrible thing I have experienced and the image will stay with me forever”.

Capote died not many years later, a broken man addicted to alcohol, never writing another book.

In my opinion, the movie was almost as good as ‘CRASH’. And the actor definitely deserved the Oscar.