CAPOTE [ movie review ]

Hours after the murderers’ execution, Truman Capote sat still in his bed while listening to the words of his friend through the telephone “…it’s because you didn’t want to...” she firmly said.


‘CAPOTE’ is a 114 minute - movie about a famous writer in America known as Truman Capote. Truman has authored various books and short stories including “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” published in 1958 and his last non-fiction book entitled “In Cold Blood”.


The movie tells of the story on how Truman (Philip Seymour Hoffman) gets too attached to a troubled murderer named Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) as he tries to dig deep in the story of death of a farm family in Kansas. Truman decided to write a book out of the dreadful killing but then found himself caring for the two murderers and even tried to help them out after being sentenced to death.


The story unlike any other movie was told not through the setting and actions of each character, but rather it was the dialogue thrown by each of them that completes the thought of the whole movie. Every word counts and every sentence that the characters said gives way for the next scene.


The film was partly shot in Kansas, in the western part of the United States. Most scenes were either inside the prison cell or in a bar with dimmed lights and cigarette smokes everywhere. The setting rather boring compared to any other drama films with the way the Director (Bennett Miller) shot every scenes, it’s like those of a suspense movie minus the eerie soundtracks.


The story also revealed the kind of person Truman was. He was a writer and he did have some attitude that many could have disliked, but as the story goes, the human behind the ‘reporter’ was slowly shown.


As a reporter, he had his own ways to get his source’s trust and made them tell him anything he’d wish to know. But the only problem was that, Truman, in the middle of the story, became too attached to his sources that resulted into a conflict with his real reasons for doing the interviews.

Truman Capote was a well known author and one that enjoys the lime light, but everyone changes and that includes him. His friendship with the murderers changed his outlook and it could have caused him his career but his professionalism did saved him

Truman could have done something for his convicted friends. He could’ve really saved them from death if he wanted to. But its not that he wasn’t able to do it, but because he didn’t want to, he knew that it was over, he got what he needed and no work was ought to be done after that.