Result? An adequate movie experience, but insofar as reliability and authenticity - probably not so adequate. This dichotomy ate at me while watching Capote. On the one hand, excellent performances, especially from Philip Seymour Hoffman as Capote, playing fruitier than even his drag queen in Flawless. On the other, what is real and what is Memorex?

The story centers around the psychological effect that a brutal smalltown family homicide (the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, in November 1959) had on writer Truman Capote (author of Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1958); how it split him into two mental halves - one side of him empathizing somberly with the jailed murderers, Richard Hickock and Perry Edward Smith (some speculating that Capote conducted an in-cell affair with Smith), while the mercenary side of him surreptitiously picked their brains for book material.

One of the best features of this movie is that, while Capote was openly gay, he was never turned into a punchline - either by the society depicted in the movie or by the makers of the movie. He lived with his gay lover with no ostracism from the entertainment world's high rollers whom he stepped out with frequently. In this respect, Capote works more toward gay tolerance than a hundred Brokeback's or Big Daddy's.

Capote seems to come out the other side of his six-year writing experience a shell of a man, and expressed no joy at the book's publication, feeling like his soul was sold for its research.

The film's darkness will seep into your own soul like dew into floorboards.


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