Review

Review Date: 22-October-06
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Infamous (2006)

Even before it opened, "Infamous" was famous for treading the same ground as last year's "Capote," a critically acclaimed film that brought Philip Seymour Hoffman his first Academy Award. (It sits atop my Ten Best list for 2005.) Both pictures recount how the witty, troubled, and singular Truman Capote researched his nonfiction masterpiece In Cold Blood in the early 1960s and developed a close personal relationship with convicted murderer Perry Smith. Both also show what a wry figure Capote cut while visiting the Kansas scene of Smith's crime and how he was ultimately undone by the experience of anticipating and witnessing Smith's execution.

"Infamous" isn't a bad movie, but unlike "Capote" it's a shade too cute and eager to entertain. In the first place, writer/director Douglas McGrath doesn't appreciate the nuance between representing his protagonist as an eccentric and belittling him as a clown. His Capote (Toby Jones) starts out as a garish gnome who flits about New York amusing wealthy ladies while the soundtrack suggests a buffoon. (His Greek chorus, or rather goddess audience, includes Sigourney Weaver, Hope Davis, Juliet Stevenson, and Isabella Rossellini.) The comic tone continues as he goes to Kansas with best friend and fellow writer Nelle Harper Lee (the warm and wonderful Sandra Bullock) to investigate how the murder of a family of four impacts a quiet community. The natives mistake him for a woman or, worse, recognize him for what he is (gay, overeducated, and after something), and it's not until he begins name-dropping and exercising his talent for telling tales that he gets his scoop. The tone then becomes more somber, as it should, but McGrath's penchant for preciousness remains. It's evident when Capote and Smith (Daniel Craig) first spot each other, and when they waltz around Smith's jail cell in a seemingly choreographed dance of mistrust, longing, and revelation.

The scenes between the author and his subject (victim? lover?) are in fact the hardest to swallow, but I'll admit the relationship gave me pause in "Capote" as well. This is one reason why the story demands to be told: whatever Capote and Smith shared over the course of several years was a rare meeting of ostensibly different minds, i.e., difficult to imagine and recreate. I'll cut McGrath some slack on this account (along with Craig, who doesn't impress), but that still leaves the movie's recurring weakness. At one point Capote reassures the killer that In Cold Blood won't marginalize him as less than human. Ironically, the film itself nearly commits this sin. In trying to be amusing it comes close to mocking and downplaying its central character.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.