**/****
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins, Jr., Chris Cooper
screenplay by Dan Futterman, based on the novel by Gerald Clarke
directed by Bennett Miller
Editor's note: I was so wrong about this film it's almost funny. It probably should've won Best Picture that year.
by Bill Chambers Richard Brooks's masterful screen translation of Truman Capote's true-crime (Tru-crime?) novel In Cold Blood is full of indelible imagery that at first seems to seep into the fabric of Capote beyond director Bennett Miller's control. But as the homages–most notably, both pictures postpone the pivotal slaying of the ominously-named Clutter family until showing it will subvert our expectations most effectively–accumulate and grow increasingly distinct, this tapered biopic begins to feel like a particularly vexing déjà vu. Except for his telltale slackjaw laugh, Philip Seymour Hoffman disappears into the title role, yet the movie is fundamentally superfluous: In presuming to tell the story of In Cold Blood from Capote's point-of-view, it presumes that In Cold Blood wasn't inherently told from Capote's point-of-view. And not only did Brooks's decision to leave the author out of his film as a character not dilute Capote's spurious liberal sympathies, if anything it found them better disseminated than this Dead Man Walking redux does. An early scene of Capote-as-raconteur, which has the electricity of Faces-era Cassavetes, gets one's hopes up, but in retrospect, it only portends Miller's knack for pastiche. PROGRAMME: Special Presentations
