Capote Connotes...

The character that Phillip Seymour Hoffman creates in this film is amazing. Granted it's an actual person, but whatever research was done, the actor still made choices, and they are wonderful ones. He plays out this interesting legend in all the various worlds he inhabited, from the schmooze-ball at classy parties, to the silent, curious observer while doing "field research", to the "tell you what you want to hear" interviewer, who gets everything he wants, and gives less away than the interviewee thinks. Really fascinating stuff.

But he never bounces off anything else. When a great actor is doing something really interesting, the most exciting moments in that performance are the direct interactions with another great actor. He played against Chris Cooper, and Catherine Keener, and Bob Balaban, but nothing revelaing came from those scenes. Perhaps that's who Truman Capote was, a man who did what he wanted, and was very uncompromising in his obscure opinions... maybe Capote didn't bounce off anything else, rather than slowly orbit very great ideas. Maybe that's why he was a genius. But then what do we watch for? Probably the best films (in the artsy, prideful sense of the word) have a very large, subtle arc to them, wherein you realize what the film was about at the very end (or whle driving home afterword). And this was probably one of those. Still, I think the most interesting films have that and a treasure trove of moments, as well, and this film didn't. Or if they were moments, they were all Hoffman as Capote, impressing fans of the acotr, and not Capote and his world, dancing and revealing.