Infamous (A- or 3.5/4 stars)
One year removed, & another movie on Truman Capote pops up; go figure. First we got Capote, now we have 'Infamous', a biodrama written/directed by Douglas McGrath. Who knew that Capote & the story surrounding his novel, "In Cold Blood", would draw such attention? To compare these 2 films proves silly. Both were made at the same time, but Capote was released in 2005 because it finished in time. Believe it or not, both films are quite different & play to each others' strengths & weaknesses. Both are equally great, for different reasons, and picking one over the other is inconsequential.
Capote (Toby Jones) & his socialite gal pal, Babe Paley (a great Sigourney Weaver) are gossiping in a club, when Kitty Dean (Gwyneth Paltrow) sings a gripping rendition of 'What Is This Thing Called Love?' This song sets the stage for the plot. What is love? Where is it allowed, how is it allowed, & whom with? In the first 45 min. of the film, we're lucky to view a side of Capote that isn't highlighted in the 2005 film. We meet the wise-cracking, gossiping, punch drunk mess that Capote is when he's with his over-the-top socialite friends. We met Babe, who is wed to a cheating CBS president. Other socialites include Slim Keith (Hope Davis), Diana Vreeland (Juliet Stevenson), Bennett Cerf (Peter Bogdanovich), & Marella Agnelli (Isabella Rossellini). Fascinated by a gruesome quadruple murder of the Clutter family in Kansas, Capote, accompanied by Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock), head off to investigate with hopes to write a new form of reportage; the non-fiction novel.
Capote finds it maddening to get any inside info from Sheriff Dewey (Jeff Daniels). Truman resorts to using his pseudo-feminine wiles & sharp wit to win-over various town folk and officials so that he can sneak his way into the jail to interview the 2 men who murdered said Clutter family. I love this entire sequence. Over time, Capote develops an intimate relationship with one of the murderers, Perry Smith (Daniel Craig, yes, our new 007). Capote's personal life back in NY, and his time spent in Kansas are the settings here. The cuts btwn. NY & Kansas are brilliant & make the movie move quickly.
Where Capote is complex, dark & mesmerizing (although mesmerizing teeter-totters on trance-like boredom with me), 'Infamous' is stylish & delves more into Capote: the person ... not Capote, the tortured soul who's trying to write this novel/save the inmates. Over 2 hours of 2005's Capote is about his tortured soul during the process, whereas 45 minutes of 'Infamous' gives us a surface awareness of who Capote IS. And the following hour shows us the dark side: the bloody murder of the Clutters/Perry's childhood/'In Cold Blood'/ & the eventual hangings. Also, the connection between Craig & Jones is deeper than Hoffman & Clifton Collins, Jr. By showing more of Capote: the person, I became more emotionally invested in the Jones performance. P. S. Hoffman is a superb actor. But Jones cannot be dismissed. His resemblance to Capote, his pin-point mannerisms & his sensitivity is fantastic.
Philip Seymour Hoffman was brilliant in showing nuance & an egotistical side to Capote in the 2005 film. But here, Toby Jones makes you feel sympathetic towards Capote & what he went through. Hoffman's Capote was guilt-ridden over Perry/his book. Jones' portrayal finds him lovelorn over Perry, heartbroken; 2 completely different takes. Both renditions seem perfectly accurate, and yet, I prefer actually prefer Jones' portrayal. Sandra Bullock is better than Catherine Keener as Nell Harper; simply because Bullock is more prominent in 'Infamous'; and just like last yrs. 'Crash', she proves that she has some great dramatic chops {and timing; wonderful verbal repartee with Jones}. I think Clifton Collins Jr.s' Perry (from the 2005 film) is more accurately depicted than Daniel Craig's here, but Craig lends some POTENT emotional scenes that are hard to dismiss. Toby Jones' touching scenes between him & Daniel Craig really prove for a stark contrast to the '05 film and they are really very well-handled.
One interesting note: Much of 2005's Capote shows that Truman pays off the inmates' appeals so that he can finish his book & keep them alive as long as possible. The appeals process is barely touched upon in 'Infamous', but that's because it's not pivotal to the plot of this movie. 'Infamous' is well-acted, quick-witted, yet a bit shallower than Capote. Judging this movie on its own merits, where it lacks a deeper content, it makes up for in many other areas. Neither film is really "better" than the other. One had to be released first. This, naturally, deems the latter film as inferior; and that's a shame.
Capote (Toby Jones) & his socialite gal pal, Babe Paley (a great Sigourney Weaver) are gossiping in a club, when Kitty Dean (Gwyneth Paltrow) sings a gripping rendition of 'What Is This Thing Called Love?' This song sets the stage for the plot. What is love? Where is it allowed, how is it allowed, & whom with? In the first 45 min. of the film, we're lucky to view a side of Capote that isn't highlighted in the 2005 film. We meet the wise-cracking, gossiping, punch drunk mess that Capote is when he's with his over-the-top socialite friends. We met Babe, who is wed to a cheating CBS president. Other socialites include Slim Keith (Hope Davis), Diana Vreeland (Juliet Stevenson), Bennett Cerf (Peter Bogdanovich), & Marella Agnelli (Isabella Rossellini). Fascinated by a gruesome quadruple murder of the Clutter family in Kansas, Capote, accompanied by Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock), head off to investigate with hopes to write a new form of reportage; the non-fiction novel.
Capote finds it maddening to get any inside info from Sheriff Dewey (Jeff Daniels). Truman resorts to using his pseudo-feminine wiles & sharp wit to win-over various town folk and officials so that he can sneak his way into the jail to interview the 2 men who murdered said Clutter family. I love this entire sequence. Over time, Capote develops an intimate relationship with one of the murderers, Perry Smith (Daniel Craig, yes, our new 007). Capote's personal life back in NY, and his time spent in Kansas are the settings here. The cuts btwn. NY & Kansas are brilliant & make the movie move quickly.
Where Capote is complex, dark & mesmerizing (although mesmerizing teeter-totters on trance-like boredom with me), 'Infamous' is stylish & delves more into Capote: the person ... not Capote, the tortured soul who's trying to write this novel/save the inmates. Over 2 hours of 2005's Capote is about his tortured soul during the process, whereas 45 minutes of 'Infamous' gives us a surface awareness of who Capote IS. And the following hour shows us the dark side: the bloody murder of the Clutters/Perry's childhood/'In Cold Blood'/ & the eventual hangings. Also, the connection between Craig & Jones is deeper than Hoffman & Clifton Collins, Jr. By showing more of Capote: the person, I became more emotionally invested in the Jones performance. P. S. Hoffman is a superb actor. But Jones cannot be dismissed. His resemblance to Capote, his pin-point mannerisms & his sensitivity is fantastic.
Philip Seymour Hoffman was brilliant in showing nuance & an egotistical side to Capote in the 2005 film. But here, Toby Jones makes you feel sympathetic towards Capote & what he went through. Hoffman's Capote was guilt-ridden over Perry/his book. Jones' portrayal finds him lovelorn over Perry, heartbroken; 2 completely different takes. Both renditions seem perfectly accurate, and yet, I prefer actually prefer Jones' portrayal. Sandra Bullock is better than Catherine Keener as Nell Harper; simply because Bullock is more prominent in 'Infamous'; and just like last yrs. 'Crash', she proves that she has some great dramatic chops {and timing; wonderful verbal repartee with Jones}. I think Clifton Collins Jr.s' Perry (from the 2005 film) is more accurately depicted than Daniel Craig's here, but Craig lends some POTENT emotional scenes that are hard to dismiss. Toby Jones' touching scenes between him & Daniel Craig really prove for a stark contrast to the '05 film and they are really very well-handled.
One interesting note: Much of 2005's Capote shows that Truman pays off the inmates' appeals so that he can finish his book & keep them alive as long as possible. The appeals process is barely touched upon in 'Infamous', but that's because it's not pivotal to the plot of this movie. 'Infamous' is well-acted, quick-witted, yet a bit shallower than Capote. Judging this movie on its own merits, where it lacks a deeper content, it makes up for in many other areas. Neither film is really "better" than the other. One had to be released first. This, naturally, deems the latter film as inferior; and that's a shame.