Infamous (2006)

Pretty Good

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Couldn't watch beyond first 30 mins. I was enjoying Toby Jones's portrayal but I've never known a movie to chop and change so much. So many short scenes and changes of setting! Including interviews/talking heads for an unexplained reason all in the same setting. Were they for TV? Seemed they were being named for us not some TV audience. Confusing. And who were these people anyhow? In some cases the names didn't help at all. Must say, all that attempt at "sophistication" gave me the irrits anyhow. Maybe these were the true characters of Capote's society. I also find it hard to fathom the eternal interest in In Cold Blood. Capote did not invent True Crime nor the nonfiction "novel." I'll never know if the movie improved or not.

Gore Vidal described his voice as what a brussel sprout would sound like if it could talk. I prefer to think of him as a live action version of Droopy the dog. This fascinating and aggravating man was gayer than Liberace, hanging out with some rather odd high class women (don't you dare refer them as eccentric, even if they do have their maid iron their money!), and ending up in a relationship with a man who has sworn off women after his wife betrayed him. The world of Truman Capote is explored in this colorful drama, focusing on his research on a real murder that influenced "In Cold Blood". When Capote visits the actual scene of the crime, you see how true to life he structured the story.Toby Jones followed up the excellent performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman with an equally flamboyant one, yet one filled with many layers. Dressed in drag to fool people he wants to interview, he looks like Granny from the Sylvester/Tweety Bird cartoons, but in spite of how animated he is, you really believe that this is exactly Capote lived. Such actresses like Sandra Bullock, Sigourney Weaver and Juliette Stevenson, the cigarette smoking "eccentric" with the money ironing fetish. Bullock is outstanding as the legendary Harper Lee of "To Kill a Mockingbird" fame. Jones is hysterical in a scene where he impresses the locals by mentioning his acquaintances from Hollywood's golden age. True or not, the way he tells it is fascinating.Having only seen Capote, the real deal, in a few interviews, all I can do is make speculations about what he was like in real life. It gives more insight into what he was as like around normal people, and he is as fascinated by the hicks from Kansas as he is with big city celebrities. With these mid- westerners obviously aware of his sexual orientation yet not shunning him has to be credited to his charm. Capote does get acidic and bitchy at times, but it's more out of frustration than his own inner demons that cause nasty queens in the first place.His interactions are also quite incisive with the killers, with Daniel Craig and Lee Pace adding individual nuances to the personalities of the killers to where they seem almost human even after committing such heinous acts. Jeff Daniels is excellent as the local law enforcement who is alternately annoyed and amused by Jones. Some crude remarks flung at Capote in the prison cell- block might offend sensitive ears, but a story that Capote tells in regards to how he deals with such ill-mannered advances is hysterical. Period detail is excellent, the writing is something that Capote would applaud, and the history lesson is invaluable. The ending is heart-wrenching as a love of sorts develops between the quietly masculine Craig and the fruity Jones, and reveals something about Capote as he watches Craig face his tragic fate. I never thought I'd have sympathy for such brutal killers, but the writing is so powerful it did just exactly that.

I guess it's indicative of the general craziness of the movie industry that two films about the same person came out within a year of each other. For my money, there's not much to choose between them, despite the fact that it was Philip Seymour Hoffman/'Capote' which grabbed the Oscar and most of the critical acclaim. However, it's Toby Jones who is - physically - Truman Capote, in so much as he's a tiny dynamo of a man, who flounces around Kansas in scarves and fur-collared coats but is able to needle the police detective at arm-wrestling. Jones is totally convincing. Less happily, Sandra Bullock is much too beautiful to mouse around small-town Holcomb as Capote's friend and fellow writer Harper Lee. This is also part of the problem with casting Daniel Craig as one of the murderers: he's too chiselled and not especially good at being a rodeo-riding American. Sigourney Weaver, Hope Davis and Gwyneth Paltrow excel as Capote's NY society friends and some of the best scenes in the film involve them in ensemble performances: cutting a rug at cocktail parties or testifying to camera about their friend's rise and fall, after his death. It's at these points that you remember that 'Infamous' is based on George Plimpton's book 'Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career', a collection of reminiscences about Capote.

Every so often, Hollywood produces two or more movies about the same subject at virtually the same time. Sometimes it seems like happenstance, sometimes it seems like ego and sometimes it's a lesser production trying to piggyback on the buzz and hype of a superior work. If we're lucky, one of them turns out okay. Very rarely do we get more than that. In the two movies made of Truman Capote and the writing of In Cold Blood, we got two very good films, though one is far better than the other.In November of 1959, a well-to-do Kansas farmer, his wife and their son and daughter were brutally murdered in their own home. The crime was so sensational that it even merited a front page story in the New York Times. That's how the horrible deaths of the Clutter family came to the attention of Truman Capote. A novelist and screenwriter of some regard, Capote is more renowned for his presence in the New York City social scene. He was the sort of devilishly irreverent and sharply insightful fellow everyone loved to know or say they knew. Capote first thinks to do a magazine article for the New Yorker about the impact the Clutter murders have on small town Kansas life. But after journeying to Kansas with his best friend and fellow author Nelle Harper Lee, Capote finds something more than a magazine article. Particularly after he meets one of the murderers, the complex and conflicted Perry Smith, Capote seizes on the idea of using fictional storytelling techniques to tell the true story of the Clutter murders and their aftermath. He pours all of his heart and soul into the work, only to be tortured for years as he must wait for the execution of the killers before his has an ending for his masterpiece. But in producing one of the greatest American books of the 20th century, a novel that changed the way non-fiction stories are told, Capote appeared to destroy himself and never wrote another significant thing for the rest of his life.Infamous is a greater effort of filmmaking than Capote and I'm now going to praise the former at the expense of the later, but I want to first mention that Capote is still a fine film and worth seeing. It's just not as good as Infamous.Fundamentally, Infamous is the better written movie and it's not even close. I t has more well drawn and meaningful characters, tells the story in more detail and depth and provides a much clearer picture of what happened and why. Whether it was Capote and Lee's interactions with the Kansas natives, Capote's place in New York's literary circles, Capote's relationship with his lover Jack Dunphy or his affinity for the doomed Perry Smith the other killer, Dick Hickock, Infamous is more informative, engaging and dynamic.That difference in quality extends to the performances, though that's a bit unfair to the folks in Capote. The cast of Infamous is given so much more to work with that it was almost inevitable they'd do a better job. The greatest example is the distinction between the main characters of these films. Toby Jones' Capote is flamboyant, mincing, gentile, driven and both charming and distant at the same time. Philip Seymour Hoffman's version gives a few glimpses of humor and wit, but is mostly quiet, solemn and overtly detached. They have the same odd and Southern-tinged voice, but these performances have very little else in common.That contrast in the level of characterization extends to just about every part. In Infamous, we're presented with an interpersonal dynamic that tries to explain why the effeminate Capote could be in love with the more macho and straight-laced Jack Dunphy. In Capote, they're simply presented as a couple with no real explanation of why these two men would ever be together. In Infamous, Dick Hickock is given a few scenes to show the audience how shallow and uninteresting he is compared to the wounded and violent Perry Smith. In Capote, Hickock is barely in the film at all and therefore doesn't serve as a comparison to Perry or the Perry/Capote relationship.Now, only the actual people involved in this story and those who knew them can testify to which version is more historically accurate and personally fair. But there's a line in Infamous that says In Cold Blood brought a kindness to Capote's writing that hadn't been there before. That sort of kindness is absent from Capote the film. It presents the writer as a fairly nasty piece of work who only summons up some regret and remorse at the moment of crisis. Infamous shows Capote as a basically decent person who, under immense personal and professional stress, behaved in unfortunate ways.What ultimately distinguishes these two movies is that I think Infamous is trying to be entertaining while Capote is trying to be significant. Capote is dominated by quiet scenes of no action or dialog that are clearly intended to be meaningful and moving. And if you're a devotee of New York literary history and already know well the story of Truman Capote, you might be able to make those scenes meaningful and moving in your own mind. But even if you've never read In Cold Blood or heard of Truman Capote, you'd still find Infamous a delightful experience.