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The second installment of a post I started many moons ago (note to self: don't make promises you can't keep...)

'Capote' is rather misleadingly titled - it's not a biopic of the legendary American writer (in fact, in the DVD extras, star Philip Seymour Hoffman reveals that that's exactly what attracted him to do the film), but instead tells the story of Truman Capote's most famous book 'In Cold Blood', written about the Clutter murders in Kansas.

Capote himself is naturally centre-stage and, though I'm in no position to say whether or not Hoffman manages to recreate or inhabit the character, I gather that many viewers have said the likeness is uncanny. At least that can be his excuse when people complain about THAT voice - a bit like Ben Stiller's in 'Zoolander', it does really grate after a while (and I bet that's the first time 'Capote' and 'Zoolander' have been mentioned in the same breath...)

But, beyond Capote himself, the subject of the film is, essentially, authorial ethics. Capote is shown trying to win the trust of the murderers (particularly Perry Smith), but this comes to seem not as compassion but as a ruthless attempt to inveigle his way into their confidence so he can use them for his own ends. Ultimately he is depicted as wracked with guilt because he wants their stays of execution to expire so he can finally finish the book. 'In Cold Blood' indeed. Unsurprising, then, that it was the masterpiece that both made and broke him, and that he never finished another book.