DVD Review: Infamous

Though it tells the same story as Capote, Infamous is a different film and well worth your attention thanks to an excellent portrayal by Toby Jones. They should share the Oscar and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar should spend six month’s out of the year on Jones’ mantel.

In November of 1959, the Clutter family was murdered in their beds. Truman Capote (Toby Jones) reads an article about the multiple murders in the New York Times and decides to go to Kansas to write a magazine article about the crime. He takes his friend Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock) along. At the beginning of the movie, her novel To Kill a Mockingbird has not been published.

Truman and Harper Lee in Kansas

Capote arrives in Kansas to looks of suspicion since he dresses in his usual flamboyant fashion making it more likely that the locals will to talk to Lee. However, Capote tones down his dress and uses his charm and famous name dropping to get in good with Detective Alvin Dewey’s (Jeff Daniels) wife. While Capote is in Kansas the killers, Perry Smith (Daniel Craig) and Richard Hickock (Lee Pace), are caught in Las Vegas. Capote manipulates his way into seeing the killers. He then sets out to write the novel In Cold Blood that unbeknownst to him will be the last novel that he ever finishes. He toils on the book for five years and realizes that for him to have an ending to his book that the killer that he has developed some attachment to, must be put to death.Now if you’ve been paying attention you’ll notice a bit of plagiarism. That plot description is mostly from my review of Capote with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Was I just being lazy? Well, a little, but it’s more to illustrate that Infamous covers the same true story that Capote covers.

In Hollywood, you think that you have the only movie coming out about whatever [killer goats from the planet Plutark, for example] and you think that you’re the only one….until the other film about killer goats from the planet Plutark opens before yours is at the theater. The first film usually steals all the oxygen that your film might’ve generated because it seems you ripped off the first film no matter when you came up with the idea. The films can be completely different and both equally wonderful, but one ends up suffering at the box office and it’s usually the one that opens later. This was the unjust fate afforded to Infamous. The films cover the same ground as Capote, but they have differences that make them difficult (for this critic) to say that one is better than the other. Infamous covers more of the Manhattan social scene that Truman traveled in. We get to see his swans (what he called his rich lady friends) Babe Paley (Sigourney Weaver), Diana Vreeland (Juliet Stevenson), Slim Keith (Hope Davis), and Marella Agnelli (Isabella Rossellini). We also see Bennet Cerf (Peter Bogdanovich) and Capote’s lover Jack Dunphy (John Benjamin Hickey), who is portrayed as a grouch unlike Bruce Greenwood’s golden boy in Capote (unsure which is the more accurate portrayal). There’s also a cameo by Gwyneth Paltrow as a nightclub singer at the beginning of the film.

Perry Smith is captured and led into jail

What this movie does is shows us that Truman truly did have romantic feelings for Perry Smith and it was his death that led to Truman’s decline. Director Douglas McGrath makes his case on the audio commentary for these scenes since no solid evidence exists that they really did have a “love” affair. Capote only implies this attraction/affair. McGrath’s case sounds like a plausible one, but again no solid proof is available.

Philip Seymour Hoffman acts up a storm as Truman Capote, but Toby Jones seems like McGrath built a time machine and went back and snatched Capote to play himself. It probably helps that Jones is really an unknown actor, unlike Hoffman. Hoffman seems like he’s playing Capote where Jones seems like he is Capote. Now to me the opposite of this in Infamous is the portrayal of Harper Lee.

I felt that Catherine Keener was Harper Lee in Capote but Sandra Bullock seems to be playing a part. Not that I know what Harper Lee is like and don’t think that I’m knocking Bullock’s performance. I just wonder what it would have been like to see a film with Jones as Capote and Keener as Lee. A pre-Bond Daniel Craig is also very good as Perry Smith and seems far more the dangerous customer than Clifton Collins Jr.’s portrayal in Capote. Craig was a last minute casting decision (the two other actors had to drop out) and was somewhat unknown at the time, but the decision to cast him as James Bond quickly took care of his notoriety to McGrath’s chagrin on the commentary track. Infamous is presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) and enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include a genial, informative commentary track from director Douglas McGrath and the film’s theatrical trailer.

Viewers should give Infamous a chance since it really is a fine film and Toby Jones is excellent as Truman Capote. Hoffman stole the thunder, but it’s Jones that has captured lightening in a bottle. I enjoyed each film equally and the rise and fall of Truman Capote is one that always holds my interest.