MCT CAMPUSInfamous
Rating: 4.5/5
Directed by: Douglas McGrath
Starring: Toby Jones, Sandra Bullock, Daniel Craig, Gwyneth Paltrow
It is unfortunate that “Infamous” may lose an audience that feels they’ve already seen the film about Truman Capote. In actuality, Capote’s life and the events surrounding his writing of “In Cold Blood” could serve as source material for many great films with varying emphases.
I haven’t yet seen Bennett Miller’s “Capote,” which won Philip Seymour Hoffman a Best Actor Oscar. Everyone I have read or spoken to that has seen both films has told me that Douglas McGrath’s “Infamous” is the superior film. At the very least, I can assure that “Infamous” deserves an audience on its own merits.
Truman Capote was an icon of American literature and society in the mid-1900s and the author of numerous short stories, scripts and the famous “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” His parents left him at a young age in Monroeville, Ala. with relatives, where he grew up with lifelong friend Nelle Harper Lee, the future author of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Capote’s parents divorced, and his mother, who dreamt of being a New York socialite, married a man who made her dream possible. Capote left Alabama for New York City, where through schooling and a start at The New Yorker, he pursued his desire to write. He was soon a tremendous literary success and a bright star of the New York artistic social circles.
“In Cold Blood,” his self-described masterpiece, began when Capote read a small blurb in the Times about a murder in rural Kansas. Herb and Bonnie Clutter and their two children were found shot to death in their farmhouse. No suspects or motives for the killings were apparent.
It is here that “Infamous” begins, at this monstrous turning point in Capote’s life. The Clutters were an affluent, kind and respected part of the Holcomb community and Capote was interested in how a small, quiet town would deal with the murders. Would the community close up, with everyone suspicious of their neighbor?
Capote left for Holcomb with Harper Lee (played amazingly by Sandra Bullock in “Infamous”), intending to write a short article, but the work ballooned into a full book as he was drawn deeper into the town and eventually the minds of the captured killers: Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.
“Infamous” works well in its juxtaposition of Capote’s life in New York and his visits to Kansas. In New York, he lives the equivalent life of Carrie Bradshaw in “Sex and the City:” an existence of frivolity, gossip, fashion and parties. In Kansas, he comes face to face with the psychological traumas of his past, and is caught between the conflicting needs of his personal sanity and the needs of his novel.
Toby Jones, who you probably recognize as the voice of Dobby the House Elf from the Harry Potter films, does a phenomenal job as Capote. Part of his success arises from how similar he looks to Capote and part of it is due to his fine acting. Jones pulls off the homosexual camp that Capote was famous for as well as the pain that came out through his connection with Smith.
“Infamous” indeed focuses on Capote’s unique relationship with Perry Smith (Bond-to-be Daniel Craig), with emphasis on a quote by Harold Nye, a Kansas Bureau of Investigation officer as quoted in George Plimpton’s oral biography: “[Capote and Smith] had become lovers in the penitentiary. I can’t prove it, but they spent a lot of time up there in the cell, he spent a considerable amount of money bribing the guard to go around the corner, and they were both homosexuals and that was what happened. I wasn’t there so.”
It is true that after meeting Smith, Capote realized how alike they were: both extremely short and both harboring feelings of paternal abandonmen. He understood they had simply walked opposite directions in life. But, as Harper Lee noted, his interest in Smith went beyond any infatuation or affair. Like a true artist, Capote’s used his pain and let it control his writing through that agonizing ordeal of creation that directs inward with sacrifice. Smith, never able to channel his anger into artistry, allowed it to flow outwardly and violently. Capote looked at Smith with deep empathy, seeing what he could have become.
With this realization, “In Cold Blood” became a psychological analysis of why the killers, particularly Smith, murdered the Clutters. “Infamous” shows the process by which Capote gained the trust and respect of Smith to be able to interview him fully and the high personal cost on Capote’s psyche. Capote was well-known for his exaggerations of the truth, his ability to get people to do exactly as he wanted and his purposeful creation of sympathetic public personas. The audience is never entirely certain how much of his relationship with Smith is genuine and how much is simply an end to the means of completing his masterpiece. It is probable that Capote wasn’t even sure of this, which resulted in his artistic collapse.
After an agonizing five-year period of court appeals, Hickock and Perry were hung and Capote’s “In Cold Blood” could be completed. Drained and forever changed, Capote never returned to writing, but fully immersed himself in social frivolity.
“Infamous” is a powerful film, but not without wonderful humor to alleviate the darkness. It is worth your time and money to see, even if you have seen “Capote.”