Opening shots of Truman Capote (Toby Jones) and Nelle Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock) boarding a Kansas-bound train amidst a bleak and desolate background convey a sense of déjà vu for filmgoers; although the players are different, the scene feels familiar. Perhaps this is because Infamous comes just one year after the Oscar-winning Capote, a film also focusing on Capote's life during the time he was researching and writing In Cold Blood, a book about the brutal murder of the Clutter family in Kansas in 1959.

Although major events in the films, as well as selections of the dialogue are similar, Capote is a fascinating and eccentric enough subject to more than justify both films. Infamous provides further insight into Capote's personal relationships, especially the close and controversial relationship he fostered with one of the two killers, Perry Smith (played here by the new James Bond, Daniel Craig).

Director and screenwriter Douglas McGrath (Nicholas Nickleby, Emma ) was inspired to make Infamous after reading George Plimpton's book on Capote, an oral biography containing the words of Capote's friends, lovers and colleagues. This style is retained in the film as several of Capote's friends periodically address the camera in the style of an intimate interview. Among those who reveal their insights is Nelle Harper Lee, Capote's lifelong friend and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of To Kill a Mockingbird, and Jack Dunphy (John Benjamin Hickey), Capote's long-time lover.

Dunphy discusses their relationship while Lee talks about her friend as a child as well as his abandonment by his parents; in this way, Infamous establishes an intimacy with supporting characters that Capote does not achieve.

When Capote arrives in Kansas with Lee, he does not get the favored reception it is clear he has become accustomed to in New York . The Kansas locals have never heard of him or the books he has written, and with his small stature, eccentric clothing and high-pitched voice, he is mistaken for a woman several times.

The locals clearly do not approve of Capote's open homosexuality and feminine mannerisms, but it is a testament to his charm and wit that he is able to win them over and become friends with the detective heading the murder investigation, Alvin Dewey (Jeff Daniels).

Capote returns to New York periodically throughout the film, into the arms of his “swans,” so named for their beauty and elegance. They are a group of rich and famous women he has befriended, and they are played wonderfully by Isabella Rossellini, Sigourney Weaver, Hope Davis and Juliet Stevenson. These scenes of extreme wealth and celebration are in sharp contrast to the simple, restrained life seen in Kansas.

However, the swans are stereotypical, self-centered, society women who engage in gossiping and backstabbing, and in these ways Capote is no different. When Babe Paley (Sigourney Weaver) discovers her husband is having an affair, she swears Capote to secrecy. He consoles her, then laughs about the situation with Slim Keith (Hope Davis). When he later asks Slim why she does not tell him personal things, she says to him, “I don't trust you.”

Highly ambitious and self-involved, Capote cares mainly about his book, the masterpiece and new literary genre he will ultimately create by employing fictional techniques in a work of nonfiction. He stays in Kansas despite the protests of Dunphy, and he ignores Lee's criticisms of both his questionable note-taking and reporting techniques, and his increasing involvement with convicted killer Perry Smith.

Capote is drawn to Smith from the moment he sees him. As he spends time with him and similarities between the two men are revealed, he is drawn in even further. The two men develop an emotional and eventual physical intimacy, a closeness that threatens to tear Capote apart when the killers are sentenced to death.

Besides being the story of a wildly eccentric, talented and tortured individual, Infamous tells of the dangers of unbridled ambition and the quest for artistic greatness. In Cold Blood was immensely popular and made Capote rich, but one gets the sense in the film that his success and wealth come at too high a price. Capote has paid for it with a part of himself he never regains.

In fact, Capote did not write another book after In Cold Blood. It is Lee who says, near the end of the film, “I've come to feel with deep heart-sickness that there were three deaths on the gallows that night.” The film ends in a sad and contemplative mood as Capote sits alone in the new apartment he can now afford, and it is certain he has lost more than he has gained.

Infamous opens in NY and LA on October 13th.