Capote (2005)

This was another repeat viewing for me. I really enjoyed it the first time. I thought it was interesting, and followed up by reading some biographical information about Truman Capote. Doing so, made this time even more interesting to me. I understood more, the relationship between Capote and Harper Lee,(played by Catherine Keener, who is just fabulous). It even made me understand more about what a strange little man he really was. I really think this is one of the best movies ever made about writing. The most amazing part of this movie, to me, was the performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman. He just seriously became Truman Capote. I thought it was haunting, dark, yet sadly amusing in parts. I loved how you could just totally see the difference in this man, from the start of writing the book, when he was so confident, arrogant, and so nonchalante about the entire thing. You could see that he found it interesting, what the murders did to this small Kansas town, but you could also see that he didn't truly "care" about it. By the end, you could see that he was almost broken by the whole experience. And though his arrogance never really went away, it was always "about Truman" it was clear that he had been profoundly affected by the relationship he had forged with one of the murderers. Even during the scenes were he was so coldly talking about how "tortured" he was by all of this, ignoring the fact that their lives were the ones hanging in the balance....you could see that he truly was tortured, and not just because it was delaying his book, but because he was so greatly affected by this entire experience. I thought this movie was fantastic.