Hoffman gives soul to the role of 'Capote'

The process of writing may be one of the least interesting things a filmmaker can try to put on screen. Lucky is the biopic-inclined director whose subject's persona is as rich as his writing, minimizing the need for all those tiresome staring-at-the-blank-page-in-the-typewriter sequences.

Director Bennett Miller is one of those fortunate filmmakers. He not only picked a fascinating character for his first feature film, "Capote," but localized his story to what must be the most dramatic period of Truman Capote's life, the investigation and publication of "In Cold Blood," the "nonfiction novel" about the 1959 massacre of a Kansas family.

Sony Pictures Classics 'Capote' 4 out of 5 stars Director: Bennett Miller Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper, Clifton Collins Jr., Bruce Greenwood Run time: 98 minutes Release date: Sept. 30, 2005 Rating: R for some violent images and brief strong language. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Capote'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Miller is even more fortunate — smarter, that is — for having cast in the lead an actor who gives the performance of a lifetime. (Never mind that he's given a couple such performances already.) Many actors could have delivered fine imitations of the author's famously effete mannerisms; but Philip Seymour Hoffman makes these (the wounded-baby voice, the prissy hand gestures) merely a point of entry into the character — window-dressing that displays one view of the man's soul while hiding others.

In an early scene in small-town Kansas, we see the friction between the man and his image. Interviewing a friend of one of the murder victims who is reluctant to confide in this strange creature from New York, Capote unexpectedly makes what feels like a confession, indirectly giving the girl permission to find him odd while offering her something to identify with. Within moments, the interviewee has decided to share a piece of evidence she has previously kept hidden.

Is this interview a rare miracle of empathy, or an example of a journalist's genius for working his subject? That issue is the heart of the movie, as Capote meets and conducts marathon interviews with the killers, particularly the strangely magnetic Perry Smith.

The author is hugely ambitious about the book he hopes to write — he intends to invent a new sort of writing, in fact — and knows such a story requires an intimate knowledge of the killers' experience. He sets out, then, not to interrogate but to befriend the men, buying them gifts and doing them favors, and the tactic works both ways. The studied nonchalance with which Capote charms cocktail-party crowds vanishes here, as he bonds intensely with a man who is almost certainly going to be executed.

As the book develops, though, so does the need to re-enter the cosmopolitan world of publicity and schmoozing. Capote neglects Smith like a lover who has lost interest, and becomes increasingly manipulative in his efforts to wring the last bits of information from him. Meanwhile, his relationships with friends suffer: Harper Lee (played as a Southern straight-shooter by Catherine Keener), who accompanied him on his first research trips, becomes a success with "To Kill A Mockingbird," and Capote grows resentful. He's a mess by the picture's end, praying for the killers' execution while pretending to be on their side.

Miller and screenwriter Dan Futterman, though, refuse to condemn the author, preferring to dig as deep as they can into the contradictory justifications for what he did and to portray him as a tragic figure whose masterpiece, "In Cold Blood," came at the price of his soul. Thanks to Hoffman, we see there was a soul to lose behind Truman Capote's polished talk-show shtick.