Starring Toby Jones, Daniel Craig, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Daniel, this movie is another telling of Truman Capote's story revolving around his book In Cold Blood. I had thought, after Phillip Seymour Hoffman's turn in Capote, that this second movie would be pointless. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this other revisioning of those people and events is quite interesting.
This movie focuses on Capote as someone whose gift was being able to get people to talk to him. "I give them what they need - a confidante, a counselor, whatever - and they give me stories." His social ease is shown as a function of this talent, rather than his being a party robot. This skill allows him to get Perry to talk.
This film makes explicit the intimate, two-way connection between Truman and Perry. There is what could have been a rape, there are kisses. The romantic connection is made clear. And, therefore, Capote's dilemma of wanting the book finished (= Perry's hanging) is horrendously in conflict with the love he feels for and has felt from Perry.
Truman in this flick is mirrored by Perry not so much in his capacity for cruelty and violence as in his deep, unfulfillable need for love. They both were children abondoned by their parents and are always seeking loving parent figures. They both want to be seen and heard.
This movie explains Perry's killing of the Clutter father and son as the result of having been goaded by his partner in crime to refute the accusation of being a "fag." His acts of restraint and odd tenderness re the Clutters have been labeled as sissy stuff by the other murderer.
Perry is complex. He possesses tenderness, he has an affinity for "the finer things in life," for culture. He is capable of loving men. And he is a murderer.
Capote's compulsion to always spin a story, to find a well-turned phrase makes it impossible for him to ever be completely honest, either with himself or any other person. He has no sense of self outside the telling of his stories. His stories are not about objective, factual truth. In Cold Blood is a true crime story told as a novel. It's purpose is to capture some sort of truth, but not the factual one.
The intertwining of Truman and Perry is a coming together of disparate dreams. Perry dreams of being seen, respected and loved. Capote dreams of the same, but also of writing a masterpiece. In choosing the dream of In Cold Blood, Capote seems to have killed his own soul. Both he and Perry were patterned by nightmares of abandonment, unable to ever really be present in their lives. Capote abandons Perry and abandons himself to alchohol. In cold blood.