"See more Hoffman" - a review by pearlyFond of Philip Seymour Hoffman? For Hoffman completists, of which I'm sure there are quite a few, Capote is worth seeing for Hoffman's performance alone. But there's a reason that Hoffman won the Oscar for his part, but there were no Oscars forthcoming for the various other possible achievements of this film. And that's because Hoffman's performance as the title character is the shining beacon of this film. Without Hoffman, the film's blip on the radar would have been almost inaudible, I'm afraid.
For a story such as this, based upon actual events that were actually rather interesting, Capote manages to be a rather uneventful film. Focussing on the portion of author Truman Capote's life when he was researching his book In Cold Blood, about a pair of men who took the lives of an entire Kansan family in the 1950s, it is Hoffman's charismatic portrayal of a man who is presumably himself charismatic, that keeps the film going, and makes you want to keep watching.
It is, in some ways, a similar portrayal to that of Judi Dench in Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005), in that both these characters grow over the course of the film, and offer more to the viewer than you would at first suspect was possible from them. With Dench's Henderson, it is a fondness that grows in your heart, but with Hoffman's Capote, there is more of a mix of emotions, but the overriding one is that Capote is not a very likeable man.
For this character study alone, Capote is worth a watch. Hoffman is a man transformed, yet again, and it is wonderful to see him bagging the Oscar, presumably not only for this effort, but for all those in the past for which he was not as highly recognised. |
