A shot of the Midwestern countryside opens the film in which a car rolls into parking outside a white two-story house close to Holcomb, Kansas.  The weather radiates a chillingly unwelcome atmosphere enhanced by overbearing silence of solitude, as two teens step out of the vehicle.  Remarkably subtle editing allows the audience to enter the privacy of the home that reveals family trinkets and portrait photos.  Again, the silence is devastating, as the two teens enter the picturesque farmhouse with scanning eyes, which suggestively brings the notion to that of a rescue mission seeking for survivors.  Later, a girl makes a macabre discovery on the second floor where a body rests in the bed adjacent to the blood-splattered wall.

It is a shockingly dreadful event, if one considers the reality of the situation and disregards the contemporary desensitization to violence in cinema.  Immediately the mind seeks for motives; both in a sense to why the crime was committed and why the first time feature director Bennett Miller took advantage of the gruesomeness of the crime in the opening of the film.  The film brings the audience on a lengthy and personal journey through Truman Capote (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) who seeks the truth to the hideous quadruple Kansas murder.  Within the grisliness of the crime, a fascinating scenario begins to evolve that triggers the curiosity in the same morbid manner that serial killers and bizarre events do.  Thus, the story really hooks the audience.

After the initial scene of the Kansas farmhouse with the dead body, a symmetrical shot of a tree line in the horizon abruptly jumps to a scene of the New York skyline.  These two different shots provide a path that suggests the very contrasting elements within the film.  It is within these contrasts a powerful cinematic event emerges, as the film wrestles with sexual orientation, good and evil, and emotions.

At first sight, the film tells an unlikely, yet true, story about the extravagantly flamboyant gay man, Capote, during the shift between two decades, the ideal 1950s to the unruly time of the 60s.  This is a time when the memories of Rosa Parks defying the Jim Crow Laws still were fresh while the gay population continued to be forced to the edge of society, as they were still considered mentally ill by the mental health profession.  In addition, in fear of repercussion and persecution, gay people sought to hide their sexual identity while living on the fringe of society.  This was something painfully close to Capote, as he jokingly hints toward the society’s intolerance in his introduction scene where he tells a story in regards to the triple whammy combination of being a Jewish black homosexual in the South.

The film never blatantly expresses the homophobic tendencies of the society.  Instead, the film presents subtle undercurrents swirling underneath the surface.  For example, Capote refers to his friend and author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), as his bodyguard while traveling to investigate the four murders in the small rural town of Holcomb, which hints towards his need of support in a small rural town.  In the town, the police detective Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper) acts in a peculiarly odd manner when Capote is in his immediate presence.  The hotel clerk’s face says more than a thousand words when he scrutinizes Capote.  And then there is the scene where Capote makes a little entrance with his newly acquired conservative outfit at the foyer of the local hotel where Capote and Harper stay, as his style of clothing is a little too extravagant for the little town.  The film is full of minute suggestions that indicate that people treat Capote differently compared to his straight counterparts.  One notion that should be pondered is his shield of fame that most gay people do not have, which helps him from overt assault.

Capote deals with the stigma connected with his sexual orientation through self-discriminating jokes that break the social discomfort that his overtly exaggerated feminine mannerisms might generate.  He also completely exposes himself in an emotional and friendly manner by telling personal and affectionate stories about his upbringing and encounters he claims he had with people.  His openness exposes his vulnerabilities, and allows for people he approaches to drop their guard towards his homosexuality.  In the process, most people begin to find him interesting, and some even begin to like him, which serves very useful in the journalistic perspective as he seeks the motive to the Kansas murders . Empathically, Capote is highly aware of what he does, as he exploits people’s weaknesses by manipulating them to his benefit by revealing his own limitation with his whiny unmanly (according to many alpha-males) voice.

Even though this review points out some of the significance of the homophobia in the story, it is never the focal point.  The film instead portrays a tremendous multidimensional storyline that focuses on Capote’s murder investigation for the New Yorker that eventually turns into his brilliant non-fiction literary work In Cold Blood.  However, it is an agonizing and eye-opening journey for Capote, as he seeks the motive to the four murders.  In the process, Capote gets to know the two murderers, Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Richard Hickock (Mark Pellegrino), with whom he begins to empathize.  It becomes a classic sample of the Stockholm syndrome.  Maybe Capote connects with them, as he can relate to the social rejection and shame that these two murderers feel.  Yet, he struggles with understanding how they could have killed the Cuttler family.

A major part of the film is Capote’s lack of understanding in regards to the murders, which contrasts the difference between him and the killers.  Yet, he approaches them with sincere intentions while also being aware that he must manipulate them to learn the truth about the slayings.  The catch-22 for Capote rests in the notion that he wants to befriend them while exploiting their lives for personal fame and fortune.  In addition, he invests a lot of himself in the project that triggers severe emotional turmoil within him, as he has to deal with combination of emotions such as loathing, empathy, affection, and depression.

Bennett Miller’s directorial début in fiction film leaves the audience with a powerful cinematic experience that shakes and stirs the audience from beginning to end.  Much of the success of the story also rests within Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s performance that must be the best male performance in the theaters in 2005 with Matt Dillon’s performance in Crash (2004) close behind.  It should be mentioned that it is not Hoffman’s first performance as a gay man, as similar performances were made in Boogie Nights (1997) and Flawless (1999).  However, in Capote he transcends his performance far beyond the notion of sexual orientation.

The vision that the director Miller has in Capote emerges through the meticulous and stunningly poignant capturing of each scene.  The camerawork helps accentuate the uniqueness of each situation, which previously was described in the strong use of contrasting concepts and symbols.  It offers an artistic freedom for the audience to freely interpret the situation while also suggestively pointing the audience in a direction.  This is not to forget the well-timed script that does not miss a beat in its lines and pauses.  Lastly, the vast number of different contextual concepts in the film presents a rather complex film that blends strong emotions with several large issues that offer the audience several ideas to cerebrally wrestle with, as similar issues are often raised in our contemporary society on a frequent basis.

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