Fridae

The votes are in, the results aren't out. But one can say with complete and utter certainty that Philip Seymour Hoffman will win the Oscar for Best Actor. Is there any doubt that his powerhouse performance as the famous gay writer Truman Capote is the stuff of legend? It belongs in the halls of great male performances, right up there next to Robert De Niro in Raging Bull and Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie.

The other nominees pale in comparison: Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain), Joaquin Phoenix (Walk The Line), David Strathairn (Good Night, And Good Luck) and Terence Howard (Hustle & Flow). Hold on, you might say. Didn't Heath sizzle as the tormented gay cowboy in jeans one size too small? Yes, he did. (And so did his butt.) You could sense the hurt, loneliness and frustration coursing through his being. (And his butt.)

But with Philip, you don't just sense his feelings; you actually get to see them. The tiniest shift of emotion can be detected by a vocal inflection, a raised eyebrow, a flicked wrist, a turn of the head. The real-life Truman Capote was proud, witty, effeminate, vain, ambitious, intellectual, sociable, cunning, manipulative and impossibly narcissistic, among many other things. And Phillip's complex, nuanced performance manages to encompass all of these qualities.

In Brokeback Mountain, Heath made dumb straight audiences realise that gay men are just ordinary men hoping for a little love - in short, completely human. In Capote, Philip made them realise that gay men can be sarcastic, fashion-conscious, stunningly talented and miraculously deluded - in short, a dazzling bitch. Hard to like but impossible to ignore.

Unlike recent biopics (such as Ray, The Aviator and Walk The Line), this film doesn't bother telling you where he was born, who beat him up in school, his favorite fairy tales, and so on. Instead, director Bennett Miller chooses to focus on the years between 1959 and 1965 when Capote was writing and researching his famous crime novel In Cold Blood. The final film is so lean and economical, you want to send a note to Martin Scorsese and ask him to re-cut The Aviator (the bloated biopic on Howard Hughes) down to one hour instead of three.

It begins with the senseless murder of an innocent family in rural Kansas in 1959. Capote, a writer in New York, happens to read about it in the newspapers. He becomes fascinated by the details of the crime, and decides to travel to Kansas to report on the aftermath of the killings. Now, few gay men can travel without their best gal pals, so Capote drags along writer-researcher Nelle Harper Lee (Catherine Keener) for the ride.

(Rumored to be a lesbian, Lee would later become famous for her novel To Kill A Mockingbird, which would one day get many O-level Lit students all worked up. But at this point in her life, she is still
Capote's go-to girl.)

The police in Kansas track down two drifters, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock (what a cute surname!), who are eventually charged for murder and sentenced to death. With the men behind bars, Capote bribes the prison warden so he can interview them personally. But Capote needs more time with the men before they are sent to the gallows, so he engages the help of expensive lawyers to push back the date of the men's execution.

(Caution: Spoilers ahead.)

However, when the novel is almost complete and Capote needs nothing more from the men, he stops giving legal assistance to them. The two are hung, and Capote's published novel quickly hits the bestsellers list and makes him a fortune. He never had to write another book.

Subtly and provocatively, the film examines the way Capote deceives the men in order to get the information he wanted. When the convicted Perry Smith asks to read what Capote had written about him so far, Capote lies by saying he hadn't written a word. He continues to manipulate the two convicts' trust with small gifts and offers of legal help, while his friend Harper Lee and his boyfriend Jack Dunphy look on in
dismay.

Unlike other biopics (The Aviator and Ray guilty as charged), this film doesn't try to glorify its subject. Capote is seen as a crafty little queen who, in wanting to write In Cold Blood, goes about getting the story cold-bloodedly.

Yes, there are great moments when LGBT viewers would cheer him on, such as when stern straight-laced policemen are staring at Capote's dandy-ish clothes and Capote says "Bergdorf" without missing a beat.

But there are also times when one could detest him. Like when the sly Capote uses his homosexuality to gain a subject's sympathy to get her to talk. He tells her pathetically, "Ever since I was a child, folks thought they had me pegged, because of the way I am, the way I talk. And they're always wrong."

But these subtle and contradictory qualities in Capote are what make the film such a riveting character study, one that's guaranteed to snag Philip that precious Oscar.