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It was always about him. Was it?

Bennett Miller’s Capote is a stirring character study of an eccentric yet talented writer, wondering just to what extent his dedication and absorption into his seminal novel actually scarred him as a person – and finished him as a writer.

Note: I’m not sure this film lends itself to spoilers, but it may, so you know. Read on after the jump.

A sketch of the finest sort, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance is spot-on – and the script does not attempt to manipulate, postulate, or coerce the audience’s reaction in any way. Through skillful storytelling, the movie celebrates Hoffman/Capote’s self-aggrandizement and simple wonder — Did the same self-absorbedness actually hasten the troubled artist’s downfall?

Though a bit choppy in the beginning (most biopics/historical fiction are), wisely stays away from too much detail surrounding the grisly tale of a family of four slain by two cons, somewhere near Garden City, Kansas. Rather, the slaying happens, and 1500 miles away in Brooklyn, Capote somehow fixates on a small New York Times story on the killings – we never really know why – and deigns to go to Kansas, with To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee (his assistant), to work on a piece for The New Yorker. (In learning a little about Capote, it fascinates me that he often claimed, or hinted, that he wrote TKAM, pretty much for Lee. Who knew? The film wisely doesn’t probe this.)

Capote doesn’t fit in, of course, in backwoods Kansas (Who does? The film opens with a shot of a vapid Kansas plain. I was tempted to boo, but the theater was packed.) Capote uses his dissimilarities to his advantage, as well as also to attempt to understand the criminals and their motives. This is where the film morphs from well-crafted storytelling into a sincere fascination with Hoffman’s Capote.

Just as it was unclear why Capote was drawn to the crime in general – it’s still unclear why he ascribes particular significance to one of the killers detailed in the landmark novel In Cold Blood, Perry Smith, an intelligent criminal from a broken home, who had faced many, many hardships growing up. Capote find in him a sort of kindred spirit – the two share stories of abandonment, and Capote’s rapt fascination begins to open up his own character to the audience.

Or does it?

Was Capote really pretending to be similar to Smith – while instead he was only focused on the end product, his watershed “Nonfiction novel,” which incorporated layer after layer of detail stemming from each discussion with Smith? The film doesn’t know. But it guesses not.

Capote does latch onto Smith (and sidekick Hickok), finding them legal representation which manages to stay their sentences repeatedly for five years. However, as the film progresses, Capote’s quest for a proper ending to his nonfiction story becomes an obsession and a dangling carrot – It could be that Truman simply helped them in the beginning to do what he needed for the story, and his betrayal to further help them seek counsel at the end serves as their own death warrant. This act of betrayal, confusing and saddening in the movie, in effect signs the killers’ death warrants – but it ultimately dooms Capote’s career and identity as well.

In effect, that’s the ‘gotcha’ in this movie. It’s not particularly suspenseful or surprising, but it is engrossing, and develops the audience’s empathy for one or two characters. Hoffman’s Capote is revealed finally as he returns to Leavenworth one final time, on the precipice of finding out exactly what happened that fateful night. As he stares intensely at Perry Smith, his eyes dart back and forth, rapid, shifty, searching Smith’s face for credibility, truth, contrition – or even a reflection.

And it’s these few shots, when you wonder – was this singular, obsession, really about Capote’s own self-discovery? (Or am I being too abstract?) But he’s revealed, to perhaps himself and to us, as he learns the sickening truth of the night of In Cold Blood – which affirms not only the story but also the killers’ conviction and resulting sentence. (The movie also gives Smith many layers – not a hardened, cold-blooded killer, but a morose, affected, malcontent with no real bearing on his own life.)

Capote leaves, truth in hand, and begins to finish his book. He distances himself further from Smith and helps no further in securing adequate counsel or favors for the two prisoners, which ultimately condemns them to execution. Capote is not elated that he can now publish the novel – rather he is ruined, forced to confront himself, he who abandoned his “friend” Smith – just another betrayal in a man’s life filled with them.

He professed some understanding of Smith because of abandonment – yet committed the same atrocity himself. And he discovers – glimpsing into himself — that he is, after all, actually capable of the same evils which drove him into friendship with Smith to begin with.

But that’s what writers do, is it not?

It’s all an odyssey of self-discovery, particularly for someone as talented and ingenious as Capote. Writers attempt to cast themselves into their protagonist, antagonist, or chief characters in whichever way they can. For an eccentric like Capote, each work was the attempt to gain insight into the person he was. That’s no different from any other fiction writer.

The danger is in his obsession with Smith – ultimately affirming an obsession with himself.

We see glimpses of Capote throughout the movie failing to understand how the world’s events actually are not crafted in order to affect him in any way. To Capote, the stay of execution paralyzes his attempt to finish a book. To Capote, the fuss surrounding Harper Lee’s book and movie is but an inconvenience. To Capote, accolades are expected, given – just as long as he’s perpetually receiving all the attention due a leading character.

And of course, when Capote opened the New York Times that day, or visited Smith’s cell for the first time, he must have felt like he found the Holy Grail. A character that was an identical, fractured twin of himself – a nonfiction persona that Capote could completely inhabit. Writing is the ultimate introspective exercise – writers are always trying to understand as much as they can about the world through their subjects. In such, it’s an exercise of learning about yourself – gleaning some sort of further knowledge or truth about your own identity. Capote seized on that, glimpsing the visage of himself first in Smith and then in his novel.

Capote became so involved with his self-discovery that he felt as though he was writing fiction, properly. He felt as though once he knew all about Smith, all about himself, all about the story – that he would be able to craft his own truth – perhaps triumphant, writing that Smith was innocent, and perhaps that the reality of the grisly situation never happened at all.

It doesn’t turn out that way – and confronted with the possibility that Smith or Capote or human beings in general may be monsters – Capote crashes. He betrays Smith, ignores Smith, and ultimately is left disillusioned for the rest of his career, wondering, what, if anything, he discovered at all.

Capote is a gripping film, worthy of whatever accolades it receives. A haunting character study, featuring great performances by an eminently qualified cast – but particularly Hoffman and Clifton Collins as Smith. In addition, the film cements the lasting power of In Cold Blood – perhaps the most effective marriage ever of journalism (the search for truth) and fiction (the discovery of self). However, the result was likely not the ‘answered prayer’ for which Capote was looking.