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All this post-WW2 ashen dreariness makes for an intriguing setting for such a colorful character as Truman Capote. The film makes good use of the stark contrast between his effeminate, wimpy, flamboyant and almost Elmer Fudd-like qualities and the prevailing masculine “Clark Kent” strong & silent type men of the Eisenhower era. As the films website declares, “During the period when homosexuality was an anathema in America, Truman was nonchalantly and flamboyantly gay”.

Additionally, the filmmakers present us with a marked contrast created between the era’s effete, flippant, NYC intellectual social scene snob culture and the staid, simple, serious people of America’s heartland.

During much of this film, characters seem to huddle together against a surrounding darkness--whether at a dinner table or cocktail party, in a jail cell or a phone booth, they are lit with a slight glow as if all is cold, mysterious and menacing around them.

Filmmakers Bennett Miller (director) and Dan Futterman (screenplay) bring up the fascinating, yet very disturbing point that Capote’s title for his famous book In Cold Blood refers not only to real life murders, but also to Capote himself--for the shrewd, morally corrupt journalistic methodologies he used in extracting information from anyone around him.

Capote will make audiences want to learn more of Capote’s early life, as it only hints as to how he himself came to be so ruthless and self-obsessed himself. Capote’s own comparisons between his own upbringing and that of the killer in In Cold Blood offer fascinating clues.

Additionally, moviegoers too young to recall the era will be treated to some realistic slices of pre-Stonewall, pre-gay liberation homosexual life in both cosmopolitan and rural America.

No stranger to playing weak, dysfunctional, effeminate and seemingly queer characters, Philip Seymour Hoffman excels in this uber-sissy of a role. Seeing this film reminded me of his many other fey character creations. His work in Red Dragon and The Big Lewbowski especially come to mind.

A talented and very busy actor, Hoffman’s first big splash came in the award-winning Boogie Nights (1997). Other films include character turns in Scent of a Woman and My New Gun (1992), When a Man Loves a Woman (1994), Twister and Hard Eight (1996), Patch Adams (1998), Happiness and Next Stop Wonderland (1999), Almost Famous and Magnolia (2000).

More recent films include The Talented Mr. Ripley, Red Dragon, Punch-Drunk Love, 25th Hour, Cold Mountain, Along Came Polly and Flawless (Screen Actor's Guild nomination). On the Broadway stage Hoffman was nominated for a Tony award for his recent performance in True West.

Many of the above-mentioned films are products of the fruitful, long-time collaboration between Hoffman and director Paul Thomas Anderson.

The very supportive cast in Capote includes Catherine Keener as Capote’s assistant, friend, and future To Kill a Mockingbird author, the lesbian writer Harper Lee; Chris Cooper as Kansas police detective Alvin Dewey, the investigator who brings the killers to justice and who opposes Capote; Clifton Collins Jr. and Mark Pellegrino as the In Cold Blood murderers Perry Smith and Dick Hickock; Bob Balaban as New York Magazine editor William Shawn; and Bruce Greenwood as Capote’s longtime partner Jack Dunphy.

True to the nature of its subject matter, Capote is a joyless, perhaps even heartless film, and appropriately so. Cliché phrases from the world of reporting, like “would kill for a story” and “cut-throat journalism” take on new chilling realism in this film. The filmmakers imply that Capote himself was so affected by guilt over his In Cold Blood experience he eventually died of alcoholism, having never published any more finished writings.

It is interesting to note, that in exposing him this way, one could say that there’s a bit of Capote-esque “cold-bloodedness” in the filmmakers themselves. Thus the Truman Capote legacy lives on.

For more information, visit the official website for Capote