Infamous

Why bring a second Truman Capote biopic to the screen, particularly one that covers the same period of the writer’s storied career as the Oscar-winning Capote? Coincidence, business issues, and critical opinion aside, writer/director Douglas McGrath is simply interested in a different aspect of Capote’s persona.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Carino Chocano remarked that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance in Capote “captures what is presented as an astonishing capacity for insinuation and connects it to a deep personal understanding of the basic human need for connection.” Director Bennett Miller focuses on the profoundly human impact that Capote’s pursuit of a unique artistic vision wrought on his own identity and those closest to him.

In Infamous, on the other hand, McGrath takes Capote’s capacity for insinuation and connects it to an ironic, reflexive, exploitative American fascination with celebrity. It’s a very worthwhile topic, and one easily leveraged by Capote’s persona and lifestyle. McGrath then depends on the audience’s own star-fervor to comment on Capote’s self-delusory manipulation of others.

The key to McGrath’s approach is the casting of Toby Jones as Truman Capote. A closer match to the real Capote’s physical size and appearance, Jones (a veteran of the British stage) benefits from a much lower profile than Hoffman. Where the latter “disappears into Capote,” as David Edelstein put it, Jones can simply be Capote. The audience is then free to play “spot the celebrity” with Infamous’ cast of supporting characters.

Right off the bat, Gwyneth Paltrow dazzles as chanteuse Peggy Lee, emotionally melting down in mid-performance, while Capote and Sigourney Weaver’s Babe Paley look on.

And then Paltrow disappears from the movie.

Based on George Plimpton’s interview-based biography of Capote, Infamous launches into a similar talking-head motif to guide the tale. Before taking us to Kansas and the murder investigation that will form the basis of Capote’s “non-fiction novel” In Cold Blood, the film introduces us to Capote’s circle of New York City influence, a collection of cultural icons that includes Paley, Diana Vreeland (Juliet Stevenson), Slim Keith (Hope Davis), Marella Agnelli (Isabella Rosellini), Bennett Cerf (Peter Bogdanovich), and childhood friend and celebrated novelist Nelle Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock).

See what I mean? Isn’t it delicious, like Red Carpet Cinema?

And Jones’ Capote manipulates them all beautifully, instinctively knowing what each of them needs and using each one’s secret to satisfy the desires of another.

Now, what Capote needs to satisfy his own deeply wounded psyche—what will help him “alchemize” those wounds “into art”—is a true fiction to documentize. As we know already, he finds it in the Kansas murder of Herb Clutter and family. He and Harper Lee arrive on the scene even before the murderers are apprehended, Capote as much a fish out of water there as he was as a child in small-town Georgia. He quickly reads the locals—who include Jeff Daniels as sheriff Alvin Dewey—as well as he does his NYC socialites, winning them over with first-hand apocryphal tales of Jennifer Jones, Peter Lorre, Humphrey Bogart, and John Huston. More name-dropping. But did he really arm-wrestle Bogart? Shhh! Neither Capote nor McGrath is telling.

And then there’s the celebrity coup de grace—Daniel “James Bond” Craig as murderer Perry Smith. Capote uses Smith, Smith uses Capote, and the tale is driven to roughly the same documented, non-fictionalized, rather predictable (if quasi-tragic) conclusion that we witnessed in both Capote and In Cold Blood.

The writing and performances are certainly strong. Jones is mesmerizing enough as Capote to make us forget about Hoffman, and the supporting stars generally manage to outshine the legends they portray (though, for me, Bullock and Bogdanovich were jarring exceptions). The production design utilizes a luxurious palette that easily distinguishes Infamous from Capote while still managing to stylistically delineate the vivacity of New York from the murderous coldness of the tale’s Kansas setting.

But good intentions and partial successes don’t add up to a satisfying whole. The film’s own fascination with celebrity disqualifies it from any meaningful commentary on the way in which Capote both publicly and privately traded on name recognition and glamour. McGrath’s casting choices repeatedly break the spell that he otherwise weaves so well, pulling us out of the film and back into our archival-quality movie memories. I’d rather have stayed in the moment, thank you very much.

Unlike its younger cousin, Infamous is unlikely to win any major awards; however, it still manages to be a fine companion piece to the earlier film. Just as In Cold Blood, as fine as it was, could have benefited from one more point of view, so also the subject of the book’s writing is enriched by McGrath’s film.

The film is rated R for “language, violence and some sexuality.” In particular, it offers graphic reenactments of the Clutters’ murders and dwells more on Capote’s homosexuality than did Capote. It’s what one might expect of a no-holds-barred depiction of one man’s failed attempt to “escape a degenerate world and create a better one.”