Succumbed to the allure of the Nova late show again, newly-imposed work hours be damned. (Well, probably wouldn't have done it if Swee Leng hadn't been keen to do the late screening thing, but even so...) --
Actually, I'm not sure how much of this was down to the lateness, but I found Capote a bit of a slog, even though I also thought that it was a good film. Mainly, I think, the thing is that the film engages much more of an intellectual than an emotional response...afterwards, I found myself thinking about Capote's character and choices as depicted in the film, and wondering how true to life that depiction was, and there's no doubt that it engaged me on that level, but Capote didn't really make me feel while it was actually running - there are no visceral payoffs or genuinely moving moments - and while that absence doesn't make it a lesser film, it does make it less enjoyable. As written by Dan Futterman (based on a book by Gerald Clarke) and played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote emerges as a complex figure - not sympathetic exactly, but recognisable and perhaps even almost understandable in his brilliant eccentricity, cold-blooded traits, and incremental disintegration. We rarely feel confident that we know whether he's being sincere, or even whether he knows whether he's being sincere, at any given moment, and this keeps us (as audience members) in a state of semi-suspended judgement at the same time that it gives an insight into the way in which Capote's inner and outer lives might have intersected and diverged as well as into the society and circles within which he moved.
It's a well-composed film; living or dying by the strength of its characterisations, it's weighted and balanced in such a way as to throw the most possible light (and, where appropriate, shade) on the personalities and motivations of the central protagonist, Capote, by way of his interactions with the others. The most notable of these, of course, is his relationship with Perry Smith, but the way he deals with and is dealt with by Jack and (Nelle) Harper Lee is also revealing (and likewise the way in which Capote and Lee interact with others while together...Catherine Keener v.g.); in a similar fashion, the trajectory of Lee's success with Mockingbird throws Capote's own tortuous progress towards the end of In Cold Blood into contrast. And wrapped up with the focus on character is a concern with understanding how people come to be what they are - if In Cold Blood is famous in part for the light it sheds on how and why people kill, then Capote is as much concerned with how its titular subject came to be the kind of person who can commit the sins against his subject that he does as it is with his attempts to unravel how Smith came to be the kind of man who could commit his sins (just one of several levels on which the film draws parallels between the two men, so apparently dissimilar).
So there's a lot to think about in this film. I think that I'm unused to films which go so deeply into a character as does this one (probably because very few of them are made) and then deals with its subject in such a complex fashion; as I said before, I didn't actively enjoy Capote all that much (some pleasingly barbed wit notwithstanding), but I don't think that it'll be easily shaken off, either.
