"Capote" may be the darkest movie I have ever seen. Also, one of the best. Based on Gerald Clarke's biography of Capote, it tells of the writing of "In Cold Blood", the story of the murder of a Kansas family of four in 1959, and the two men arrested for, convicted of, and executed for the killings. Capote spent almost five years on the story, which was the subject of his acclaimed and best selling book.
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Capote extraordinarily, and Caroline Keener plays Harper Lee, his friend and sometime assistant, who wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird" when some of her friends did not even know she wrote.
Of the two murderers, Perry is the more central character. Truman and Perry, both products of terrible homes, virtually abandoned to the world As Capote says, it is like we were the raised in the same house, only I went out the front door and he went out the back. This is obviously one of the reasons for their drawing so close to each other, and one of the reasons that Capote suffered a virtual nervous breakdown and never wrote another book.
The movie is in color, but its memory is in black and white. It is slow moving, it is fascinating, and boy, does it make you think.
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