TRoux Reviews

Infamous by Douglas McGrath is another take on Truman Capote’s writing of his best-selling novel In Cold Blood (1965). In 2005 Philip Seymour Hoffman starred in Capote, a leading role for which he won many awards, leaving Toby Jones with a hard act to follow in Infamous. The film recounts how a newspaper article on the four deaths of a Kansas family fuel Truman to write an article on the repercussions that such a murder has on the collective and individual psyches of the small town’s community. His childhood friend, Nelle Harper Lee (starring Sandra Bullock), who goes on to win a Pulitzer prize for To Kill a Mocking Bird, accompanies him to Kansas to aid his research. When his research yields fruitful results, he is inspired to write a novel and not just an article. As he becomes more and more entrenched with one of the killers named Perry (played by Daniel Craig), his endeavour becomes a five year project that ultimately consumes him.

The film may not be the best technically constructed product of the year, but it certainly is a very amusing and clever depiction of the people, the events and the themes surrounding the Kansas murders which In Cold Blood is based on. The way in which Truman is represented echoes his own representation of Perry in the novel: a full-rounded character, both with strengths and weaknesses, both with abominable and endearing qualities, a multidimensional, full-fleshed human. Truman is a socialite with superficial brash bravado, luxurious tastes, and he is at times an insensitive gossip who either embellishes on the stories he tells or betrays the confidences which his so-called closest friends entrust him with. But he is also a sensitive and substantial soul in his private life: friend to writer Nelle Harper Lee, a plain woman who avoids the limelight, and lover to Jack Dunphy, an unpolished and unsocial writer and playwright. The viewer experiences a roller-coaster ride of emotions for Truman: adoration, resentment, amusement, incredulity, sympathy, judgment.

In Cold Blood is a novel that is based on historical fact. Some critics denounced Truman for his unimaginative writing, and others praised his new art form. In 1966 in an interview with The New York Times, he himself said of the book: “It seemed to me that journalism, reportage, could be forced to yield a serious new art form: the ‘nonfiction novel’, as I thought of it…Journalism is the most underestimated, the least explored of literary mediums”. Faction has come a very long way since, and is very popular nowadays.

SPOILER WARNING: Truman’s novel was a melting pot for fact and fiction, and so too is this film. A lot of historical figures in the book accused him of misquoting them or changing what happened to suit the novel’s needs. Just like the reader of In Cold Blood has to wonder how much truth there really is in his fiction, the viewer of the film also has to question how much of Truman’s portrayal is truth or non-truth. Did he really give Perry the respect and attention he so desperately needed just to get him to cooperate on his novel? And did he really fall in love with him at the end? Did he really feel guilty about his betrayal? Was he actually haunted by being in love with a murderer?

The film begins and ends cyclically with Truman busy working on his new endeavour called Answered Prayers. He never managed to parallel In Cold Blood’s success, though. After its publication, he started work on Answered Prayers, a chronicle of his socialite life-style and friends. He never managed to complete it, yet several chapters of it was published in a magazine called Esquire in the 1970s. But it was met with negative feedback from critics and it caused him to alienate and lose many of his friends, who felt betrayed by his disclosure of their private lives in public. In the film it is said that In Cold Blood both made his career and ended it all at the same time. Truman succumbed to alcoholism and drug abuse to deal with his writer’s block and the negative criticism he received after his masterpiece, and died in 1984 without having rivaled In Cold Blood’s success. There is a very powerful scene where Nelle criticises Americans’ inability to be content with what a writer has already produced, and their greedy need for “what’s next”. As if a Pulitzer prize-winning novel is not enough, but has to be superceded and paralleled with the same success.

Writing demands a lot from a writer. Personally, I think that the close-up shot of his beginning of Answered Prayers, not only represents the end of Truman Capote, the man and the writer, but also links up with the following quote by Mother Theresa: “There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers”. Truman craved fame, and he got it, but at what cost? One has to wonder whether the success of In Cold Blood was worth the obsession and ultimate destruction it caused. But it made him a legend, and of what little I’ve gotten to know about Truman, even though it cost him dearly, I think that he would not have had it any other way. SPOILERS END HERE.

How refreshing to see that Sandra Bullock could finally break through the stereotype mold we have become used to, and realise that she can really act – and well at that. I was really pleasantly surprised by her understated performance.

The film also addresses other contentious issues concerning murder: Is a troubled childhood really an excuse for committing murder? And is there really a difference between the unpremeditated murder of civilians and the premeditated killing of murderers sentenced to death? All in all, the film leaves one with a lot to meditate on.

Genre: Biography/Drama
Running time: 118 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Douglas McGrath
Writing credits:
George Plimpton (book)
Douglas McGrath (screenplay)
Producers: Jocelyn Hayes
Distributed by: Warner Independent Pictures
Main Cast:
Truman Capote – Toby Jones
Nelle Harper Lee – Sandra Bullock
Perry Smith – Daniel Craig
Alvin Dewey – Jeff Daniels
Slim Keith – Hope Davis
Gloria Guinness – Isabella Rossellini
Babe Paley – Sigourney Weaver
Gore Vidal – Michael Panes
Dick Hicock – Lee Pace
Kitty Dean – Gwyneth Paltrow