Junto Boys

CAPOTE (2005) (A Movie Review)

The trick in bringing a biography to the screen is getting the human being right and using the real details to interpret motivation and events. I lately criticized TUCKER because the over-the-top style served as a mask for the real man, a charlatan. Coppola decided to remove any complexity or ambiguity from the character so that Tucker is idealistic and harmless and the real villains could be the powerbrokers. In lesser hands, CAPOTE could have centered on the wit and charm and New York nightlife and Truman could have been simply a cartoon like Tucker with ability for prose. Writing IN COLD BLOOD could have simply been Capote finding his soul, a dual struggle of the homosexual and the criminal trying to find a place in backwards America. Those were the easy and usual choices and about what we could expect from a typical Hollywood film.

Luckily, these filmmakers find a much better central conflict in the story. Is Capote and artist or a humanitarian? George Clooney’s famous Oscar speech in March addressed this issue and told us of all the great humanitarian things Hollywood is responsible for. Clooney didn’t say that Hollywood chose humanitarianism over artistry. He doesn’t think the two are exclusive. But Hollywood is more comfortable being humanitarian, because you get quick credit for that while being a real artist mostly goes unnoticed.

Truman Capote's first struggle in CAPOTE is simply writing the story. The locals are less than helpful and the murderers won’t talk with anyone. He has no qualms about keeping the murderers alive long enough to get their story on paper. He has no qualms about wanting them to die once he does. The climax is the realization that his lack of effort contributes to kiler's ultimate execution. How much this bothered the real Capote, I don’t know. But the filmmakers do a great job of making this the doing of Capote’s fame as an artist and the undoing of Capote as a human being. It’s a much bolder choice than we expect from the average Hollywood film that often times create super villains that our heroes either defeat (ala James Bond) or succumb to (ala CONSTANT GARDENR).

It don’t mean to say that they nailed the real Truman Capote. I think don’t think any movie every fully nails a real person, even documentaries only show you the impressions that the filmmakers want to display. For instance unlike Normal Mailer who has spent most of his life trying to outdo his most important work, Capote didn’t try. Capote instead settled into celebrity and socialite. He spent his last years on the talk show circuit drinking himself to death. The written epilogue at the end of the movie suggests that this experience is what “ruined” the artist. That’s an interpretation and wholly valid within the known facts. It fits the theme rather than a party-line.

In contrast, George Clooney brings Edward R. Murrow to life in an amusing and interesting way, but he’s not really interested in honestly exploring Murrow’s motivations behind his exposure of McCarthy. He just uses McCarthy to make his point that the red scare of the 1950s was bogus and people were terribly ruined for nothing. In fact, the real Murrow’s exposure of McCarthy wasn’t about the validity of the communist threat, but about demagoguery alone. Whatever his politics, Murrow was an anti-communist himself to the point that he later regretted making a documentary about the plight of rural America that the Soviets would later use as their own anti-American propaganda. Only a few years after Clooney’s events, the real Murrow went to work for the U.S. government and helped craft pro-American messages. Instead of choosing an interesting man bites dog angle, Clooney stops at the point his intended message is disseminated. The Clooney movie turns with the subplot of the colleague who is beleaguered by the Times Columnist and eventually commits suicide. I don’t know the real history here, but I know by the way it’s presented that something is being left out. Whether the character is fiction, a composite or whether the co-worker had other mitigating issues, no healthy and innocent person commits suicide because of unfair press. This is the only hinted at motivation for Murrow and it's weak pillar once you examine it.

In contrast, whether true or not CAPOTE's conclusion that suggests that the harrowing experience of writing IN COLD BLOOD ruined Capote is consistent with his self-destruction, even if Capote’s demise can be read by others as a result of ego, hubris, and alcoholism. Here’s a guy who alienated many of the people he once included as friends after he published some magazine excerpts from a book he was writing society-life. In contrast, it’s very hard to think that the Murrow at the end of Clooney’s movie could become a spokesman for anti-communism or regret what the Soviets would do with his work. Therefore, the movie rests simply as a message vehicle that arrives at its intended destination but can nary drive 2 feet forward from there.

One of the illusions that Hollywood falls for is that comedy is entertainment and drama is art. Many would say that OCEANS 11 is entertainment and GOOD NIGHT is art, but in actuality both films are aimed at entertainment, the difference is that OCEAN'S is designed for box office and GOOD NIGHT for recognition. Both are directed squarely at a specific audience and they both hit their target. The popcorn movie fan responded exactly the same with his dollars like the leftward leaning Academy member did with his vote. If you don't enter GOOD MIGHT with the idea that the red scare was bad, you are given two reasons to start thinking so, Murrow's co-worker was driven to suicide and McCarthy was overbearing. So you are either already converted to that thought or you're supposed to use your emotions to climb aboard. I don't know how that's any different than responding to OCEAN'S with the emotion of momentary happiness that laughter brings.

Maybe it’s possible to begin as an artist and by accident unleash a trendy message along the way, but for the true artist it should be akin to digging rocks out of a yard and happening upon a $10 bill. I cannot say that CAPOTE is art itself, but it’s certainly on a path to art if nothing else, and the lesson it teaches about art is a minority voice in the community from which it comes. Although my viewed list from 2005 is hardly exhausted, I think it’s the best film of the year.