**/**** Image A- Sound A- Commentary B-
starring Toby Jones, Sandra Bullock, Daniel Craig, Peter Bogdanovich
screenplay by Douglas McGrath, based on Truman Capote by George Plimpton
directed by Douglas McGrath
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Just as Milos Forman's Valmont was doomed to live in the shadow of Dangerous Liaisons, so, too, will Douglas McGrath's Infamous always be the poor relation to the Oscar-winning Capote. This is no mean feat: while Dangerous Liaisons was a very tough act to follow, Capote is an average-to-decent TV movie with a mugging central performance. Toby Jones manages to best Philip Seymour Hoffmann in seeming like someone named Truman Capote, but aside from a couple of peripheral turns, the film fails completely to suggest real life: whatever your feelings on Capote, it managed to give a sense of the psychology behind the bon vivant while being far more damning of his handling of the case that became In Cold Blood. Capote may have been a little square, but Infamous pretty much amounts to starfucking–and unconvincing starfucking at that.
We all know that something funny went down when Capote, itching to invent his "new form of reportage," investigated the murder of the Clutters in rural Kansas and came in contact with the killer Perry Smith (Daniel Craig). Until that fateful meeting, Infamous features a half-hour of what people expect from a Capote movie: that is, the author cutting up. A seemingly endless array of publishing types (presumably culled from George Plimpton's oral history, credited as the screenplay's source) are invited to be his audience, with counterfeits ranging from Diana Vreeland (Juliet Stevenson) to Bennett Cerf (Peter Bogdanovich) and Babe Paley (Sigourney Weaver). Vreeland/Stevenson has her own grotesque moment when she admits, in one of a tedious number of faux-documentary talking-head inserts, to ironing her money, but mostly, this section of the film is devoted to the novelty of the British Jones deploying an accent and spitting out the witticisms–which to be fair, is the box in which he and the rest of the performers are hopelessly trapped.
Of course, it all has to come to an end: after the writer worms his way into the lives of Kansas natives (an occasion for more so-Capote behaviour), the killers are captured and Capote finds in Smith his rendezvous with legend. The film, which has until this point strictly skimmed the surface of the events at hand, really doesn't know how to deal with the mixed emotions that their meeting creates: though Craig nails his turn as the would-be artist who drifted into poverty and then murder (and though Jones manages to lend credibility to his caricatured role in interactions with Craig), there's no denying that the relationship had to be more complicated than the way it's presented here. Capote at least tried to show the cynicism behind the author's exploitation of Smith, the crime, and anyone who was within hailing distance–Infamous refuses to put Tru under too much scrutiny beyond depicting the occasional "outrageous" indiscretion. It doesn't make him an angel, yet it forgives him far too much.
This, of course, is the trap into which many Capote recreations fall. Like Andy Warhol, everybody yearns to be anointed by the artist's presence; we don't necessarily want to hear reasons because that would shatter the image of the perfect surface that both artists managed to project. Thus it becomes increasingly difficult to render Capote with anything like psychological detail, since everyone, the author included, was working overtime to either fabricate or sustain that image. True, his childhood friend Harper Lee is on hand to say otherwise (and in Sandra Bullock, the film has another actor who soldiers on, script be damned), but the film can't–or won't–entirely surrender the fiction that destroys genuine reflection. However half-baked Capote is, it showed cracks in the attention-craver and sometimes-vampire that was Truman; Infamous is rightly doomed to second-banana status.
As for the film's DVD presentation, it's another solid performance from the folks at Warner. The 1.78:1, 16×9-enhanced transfer is good at getting the subtleties of the surprisingly varied palette: fine detail is perhaps a bit off, but the shadings of the gaudy socialite interiors and the grim tones of the Kansas exteriors are handled with equal aplomb. The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is also a bit of a surprise given the film's all-talk status: the clink of glasses (essential for any representation of Capote) and the hum of rooms full of people provide nice ambiance while exploiting the surrounds more than expects.
The only extra of consequence is a commentary with writer-director Douglas McGrath, who proves entirely too credulous, not only patting himself on the back for his obvious technique (he notes that he usually ends scenes on a question) but also making obvious remarks about Capote and what's going on in the scene. Although he has a few interesting anecdotes about the author (including a great one involving Norman Mailer), you're better off reading the Wikipedia entry. Also included is the film's trailer; trailers for The Painted Veil, For Your Consideration, Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, and The Prestige cue up on startup.
118 minutes; R; 1.78:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
