Infamous

Super Marcey's Infamous Review

Rating: 4/5

This film  really captured the look of the times, and I really liked how they had  the people in Truman's life speak about what was happening through-out  the film. The pacing of the film felt just right and it flowed pretty  well, and you get to experience everything you'd expect with this story.  Truman had a connection with this place and this crime and of course  with Perry, and I think the film did a great job showing that and really  making you feel it as well. It is a real shame more people do not know  about this film, I really would recommend this. I was impressed with  just how much I really liked this and how good it was. Just because  there is another film out there about the same thing, it doesn't mean it  is bad. I actually think both films are great in their own right, and  of course the story is an interesting one. Things which really struck  out at me, I really loved the scene where Truman explains the title of  the book 'In Cold Blood'. Which reminds me, I have that sitting on the  shelf to read, I should get to it at some stage.


(Written on April 16 2010, first published at SuperMarcey.com)

Recommendations: Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009), Milk, Hurt Locker, The (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009)

Last updated: 2010-04-15 16:14:35 by SuperMarcey

INFAMOUS

Thanks to a fortuitous set of circumstances and the largess of some very good friends, Lynda and I were invited to attend a special preview screening of the latest feature film based on the life of Truman Capote.

Talk about deja vu...

Yes my fellow cineastes, this coming weekend writer/director Douglas McGrath's INFAMOUS will be released in several major cities. It's arrival in selected theaters comes approximately one year after Philip Seymour Hoffman's Academy Award winning portrayal was being projected on thousands of screens nationwide, and not only is the central character the same, both films cover precisely the same period in Capote's life albeit in considerably different fashion.

This, of course, begs the question: Is INFAMOUS worth seeing?

The answer is yes.

Like CAPOTE, INFAMOUS is also a compelling study of the complex and tortured relationship between the famous writer and Perry Smith, one of the two murderers convicted of the brutal slaughter of a well-to-do Kansas farm family. The overall tone, however, is lighter, with numerous scenes of Truman spending time with his "Gotham glitterati" and, especially, some very funny moments when Capote, accompanied by his closest friend, Nelle Harper Lee, first arrives in the Sunflower State. But make no mistake, the ending is a powerful one that draws the conclusion that the strong, emotional bond Truman formed in prison with Perry ultimately brought about not only the destruction of Capote's career, but the destruction of his soul as well. "I've come to feel with deep heart-sickness that there were three deaths on the gallows that night," says Lee, and one cannot help but believe this is true.

The cast is excellent. Toby Jones' portrayal of Truman Capote is riveting and is possibly a better imitation than Hoffman's more nuanced performance. For my money, they are both superb -- had INFAMOUS come along first, Toby Jones might have been nominated for an Oscar as well. Sandra Bullock, as Nelle Harper Lee, will surprise even her harshest critics. She certainly holds her own in comparison with the marvelous Catherine Keener. Sigourney Weaver, Isabella Rossellini, Peter Bogdanovich (as Bennett Cerf), Jeff Daniels and Daniel Craig (as Perry Smith) all deserve special mention as well.

Amazingly, Gwyneth Paltrow reportedly earned a staggering $3.6 million to play Peggy Lee singing a three minute rendition of "This Thing Called Love" in the opening scene. This makes Ms. Paltrow the highest paid actress ever for a cameo appearance. The scene is important, it establishes the concept that sadness often lurks beneath the spotlight, a theme which will increasingly pertain to Mr. Capote as the film proceeds. Still, this was money clearly wasted in a film possessing outstanding production values throughout given its relatively low budget.

True, the ground being covered is virtually the same as we've seen before. So what? I recall having traveled the same hiking trail more than once and I inevitably discovered something new and different on each trek. The same analogy holds for these two feature films; both are extremely well made and both provide interesting and enlightening insight into a fascinating and talented personality.

(Read Less...)

Robert A. Nowotny

Infamous

Infamous’ flaw is that it forgets about the victims. It’s a murder story that believes writers’ block is a greater tragedy than homicide. Would that there was not another Truman Capote movie out there (and an Oscar-winning one at that), the film-makers might have got away with making a perfectly serviceable, star-studded meditation on angst – but there is another Truman Capote movie and Capote is to Infamous whatRaging Bull is to Rocky V. Ok, that’s a bit harsh, but what Infamousmisses out seems almost as egregious an error. How can a film tell the story of In Cold Blood and leave out those who were murdered so that it might exist?

The key difference between these two films is where they choose to begin. Infamous starts with Capote enjoying himself. We are in a New York nightclub and Gwyneth Paltrow is singing to us. It is a sad sad song, full of heartache and romance, and she sings it like a woman who might well walk off stage and take an overdose when she’s finished. Toby Jones watches her as though his eyes are her life raft. He seems to feel every peak and trough of her emotions, and (which is more) he makes no secret of his sensitivity.

Jones does stirring work with his depiction of Capote in this movie and this first scene is a tip-off that he’ll be every inch Philip Seymor-Hoffman’s equal: his Capote is self-aware, but vital; alive, even though his manner of living seems mannered in the extreme. He speaks (as one friend notes) “the way a brussel sprout would sound if a brussel sprout could talk”. He is an oddity and being different has (with mixed blessings) made his reputation.

Capote reads about a murder in Kansas. A wealthy farmer, his wife and two children have been killed. They would make a good subject for a story, he thinks. In Capote there had been a lot of scenes set in Kansas before this scene. We had been taken to the house where these murders occurred right at the beginning. Why? Because, I think, people were murdered here, and Truman Capote will only come to know that – know them, I should say – much later. In his writing he knew exactly in what order the events of In Cold Blood should be told. He started with the last day on earth of the murder victims.

Infamous might get everything else right, but if it makes no space, no hole in its story where a Kansas family are dead, then it has missed what is most essential to Capote’s only real lasting literary achievement (don’t get too up-in-arms: I like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” too, but it ain’t Moby Dick).

Casting Sandra Bullock as Nelle Harper-Lee does no harm, though I can’t make up my mind whether she is worse than Katherine Keener or just more famous and so more noticeable when doing an accent. Likewise, Daniel Craig is a fine Perry Smith, but there is a quality to his madness that’s a bit familiar to those who remember him from his pre-James Bond days of Love is the Devil and The Jacket.

Infamous shows us how Capote adapted to life in Kansas; how he disdained the place; got used to it; fell in love there and watched the man he loved executed. We get bits of life back in Manhattan; Capote’s “swans” (read: mature NY society-groupies), for whom he was confidant, raconteur, rabbit’s foot and cautionary tale – played beautifully and each with their own shard of fragility by such master-class scene stealers as Sigourney Weaver, Hope Davis and Isabella Rossellini.

But always there are ghosts missing. And though Capote on screen might find his soul in the depth of loss he experiences when Perry Smith is executed, Capote in print (and in Capote) found his soul in how he wrote about four murders. In Cold Blood isn’t famous just because it’s Truman Capote’s last book.