Capote (2005)

I must confess to being slightly weary of the Academy doling out acting Oscars for impersonations rather than interpretations of real people whether it be Ray Charles, Katharine Hepburn, Virginia Woolf, or whomever.  This is not to say that versatile actor Philip Seymour Hoffman isn't very adept in the title role here, but mimicry in itself is not enough to satisfy.  Fortunately we are given a well-written and absorbing story as well, even if the facts were pretty well-known beforehand.  The gist of the plot is that Capote is commissioned by the New Yorker magazine to cover the trial of two lads who senselessly slaughtered a family of four on their farm; this forms the story of the film "In Cold Blood" which is from the book that Capote ultimately produced.  How he came to write  it and why he never wrote another, despite being one of the best-known authors of his day, is the meat of this movie.  Much is made of his interest (quite probably romantic) in the more sensitive of the two killers and how he intervened to postpone their hanging for as long as possible, all the time knowing that he could not complete his book until they were dead.  Hoffman slips into the role of the rather effete writer with some ease, even if he is substantially larger than the wee Capote.  But while this shows the actor's craft, it still leaves me wondering how necessary the whole pantomime is.  I am in no rush whatsoever to see the second of the two movies which came out a year later with Toby Jones doing his own Capote cloning.