The summer has its blockbusters, but for me, the best time to go to the movies is the end of the year. Just in time for the upcoming awards season — and to cater to the apparently limited memories of voters — Hollywood traditonally crams the end of the year with arguably some of its best work. This year is no exception.
One of the more competitive categories for the Oscars and other awards is sure to be for best actor. I just came back from watching "Capote," starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who is sure to receive multiple nominations for his performance as Truman Capote, the author of most famously of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "In Cold Blood." Unlike other recent biographical films ("Ray," "Walk the Line") which try to tell the rise and fall and rise again of their subjects, "Capote" focuses on the four years Capote spent working on "In Cold Blood," his "non-fiction novel" — a term Capote invented — about the murders of a Kansas farm family in 1959.
"Capote" is far from a perfect film; the narrative stalls and sputters at moments. But from the first frames of Capote holding court at a New York dinner party, I was entranced by Hoffman's performance. I have no memory of Capote, but based on what I have heard and read about him, it was clear that Hoffman had him pegged perfectly. His high-pitch voice. His appreciation of fine fashion. His addiction to alcohol. His insecurities. His homosexuality. Hoffman, one of the best character actors at this moment in Hollywood, creates a character the audience can believe in, even if they have never read one of Capote's books or are not familiar with how he wasted his genius with his addictions to booze and celebrity.
"Capote" is the story-behind-the-story, not only of the author's life but how he produced his greatest work. It was fascinating to watch how the shy, insecure Capote, with the invaluable aid of Harper Lee (played by Catherine Keener), wins the confidence of the Kansas townsfolk and police he needs for his story. But for Capote, he cannot finish his book until one of the two killers, Perry Smith, tells about the night he and his partner killed. Capote seduces Smith, not sexually, but by offering himself as a confidant and confessor. Capote helps with their legal defense, but it's not help them but to help him finish his book before their date with the gallows. It is this manipulation that at the end makes Capote as unsympathetic character as the killers he chronicled.
The risk with the bio-pic genre of filmmaking is the actor portraying the subject will resort to a bad impersonation or worse, caricature. There is a lot to caricature about Capote, but Hoffman avoids that to create a real character with whom the audience can sympathize — or abhor.
(Two supporting performances in "Capote" — Keener as Capote's friend from childhood Harper Lee, who wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird," and the magnificent Chris Cooper as the lead detective in the murder investigation — are deserving of voters' consideration for awards.)
Hoffman's competitors for Oscar and other awards should include two other actors who portrayed real-life people, Joaquin Phoenix, as Johnny Cash in "Walk the Line" and David Strathairn, Edward R. Murrow in "Good Night and Good Luck." Like Hoffman, Phoenix and Strathairn did not impersonate their subjects but created characters that will not be easily forgotten this awards season.
It's a tough call, so tough I'm glad I don't have to vote, but if I did — and the deadline was today — I would give the edge to Phoenix for how he revealed the true man behind the "man in black."
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Other recent acting performances worthy of acclaim are Reese Witherspoon, as June Carter Cash in "Walk the Line," and Jamie Fox, last year's Best Actor Oscar winner for "Ray," for his supporting turn as a Marine sergeant in "Jarhead."
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