One semester in college, I took a "film as literature" class. One of the stated objectives the professor had was that we would learn to "notice what we notice (and what we don't notice)." In other words, what we are quick to see in media provides a clue to who we are.
I thought about this again when I finally got around to renting "Capote" last night. Wow. Philip Seymour Hoffman pulled off a stunning performance. After all, Truman Capote was a man whose signature affect would have been easy to caricature but difficult to embody realistically. (The exact vocal intonation and half-awake facial expression I remember from 70s talk shows only showed up once, during a scene in which Capote was sloshed on martinis. Was he drunk every time I saw him on TV as a child? I have to wonder now.)
During an almost throw-away line at the beginning of the film, Capote is partying with the cosmopolitan elite and having a bull session about truthfulness. He holds himself up as the soul of honesty, a revelation which brings howls of derisive laughter from his friends. "No, really, I'm very truthful," he protests.
The rest of the film exposes that as a lie.
The film "Capote" deals solely with the events surrounding the publication of his landmark book In Cold Blood. Although he lived another twenty or so years after its publication, it was the last book he completed.
Why?
The story details, in sometimes hearbreaking detail, how untruthful he could be, how obvious that character flaw was to those who loved him, and how much in denial he was about himself.
While interviewing Perry Smith, Smith asks him what the title of Capote's book is. Capote feigns ignorance: "I have no idea. I've hardly written anything." When Smith confronts him with a newspaper article describing his first public reading of a book called In Cold Blood, Capote blatantly lies, saying the publisher picked an "admittedly sensational" title for publicity purposes. Capote can't afford for Smith to know how he's really been portrayed, so he soothes Smith's ego, then goes in for the kill by pressing him to talk about the actual murders. Once he has that story, he knows, the book is complete ... and he can let Smith and his accomplice go to the gallows.
Capote knows he's captured somethiing extraordinary - something that would change the face of American literature - between the covers of his manuscript. And he uses that knowledge to justify his deceptive, manipulative behavior to himself. But his conscience gets the better of him anyway.
Forced by his friend Harper Lee to visit the murderers on the night of their hanging, Capote breaks down and weeps uncontrollably. And here's where the "notice what you notice" part comes in. What I saw in Hoffman's agonizingly twisted, tear-streaked face was remorse over his treatment of these two men. But what Hoffman intended (according to the audio commentary laid over this scene on the DVD) was that Capote was genuinely sorry to lose these men as friends.
Who's right? Maybe we both are. But I ask you to consider the evidence: Why was Capote never able to complete another book? Why did he eventually drown in a sea of alcohol?
And why did he inscribe a later, unfinished manuscript with this quote from St. Teresa of Avila:
"More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones."
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