One might say Capote was to literary journalism what Andy Warhol was to painting--both fed off the popular “reality” of the masses to create a “popular” art.

As Capote begins, we meet the famous jet-setting writer at height of his popularity, still enjoying the success of his recent Breakfast at Tiffany’s. One day while reading the news he comes across a minor news report about the brutal murder of four family members in Kansas. He becomes inspired to write about it.

In order to get his story (or as some might say “in order to serve his art”) Capote flies to Kansas and promptly begins to slyly and obsessively exploit everything relating to the small town tragedy in order to realize what will become his definitive work, In Cold Blood.

He cunningly, and even conceitedly, interferes with the due legal and criminal processes surrounding the apprehended murderers, actually finding them a better lawyer and even bribing their prison warden into granting him daily access to them for interviews. He wants to keep them from being executed until he gets them to confess and describe their grisly murder. This is the key information he needs to complete his book.

Capote features some stunningly beautiful camera work, much of it stark, grim and haunting. This movie is part film noir and part still life collection. Audiences are shown many snapshot-type views, of various settings including the cold, empty Kansas prairie, vacant small towns, rural houses and gruesome freeze-frame police crime scene photos, all evocative in a “still life” kind of way

Although filmed in color, scenes in Capote are often cinematographically set up so as to be visually drained of life and color. The overall look of the film is like that of a faded 50-year-old color photo in the family album. To great effect, things appear toned down to sepia or muted gray tones, as in Michael Radford’s 1984 film Nineteen Eighty-four. There is also a velvety blackness present throughout that is reminiscent of Coppola’s Godfather films.