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'Capote': Fascinating fall

Like the murders of an unsuspecting Kansas family one morning in 1959, the making of the "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood, which immortalized those killings and cemented author Truman Capote's literary legacy, is a messy, emotionally chilly experience.

Rookie screenwriter Dan Futterman and first-time feature film director Bennett Miller set their sights high in Capote, aiming to examine the duplicitious, symbiotic relationship between a writer and his interview subject. That may sound like a rarefied subject better suited to a journalism trade publication, but these relatively novice filmmakers transform it into the stuff of gripping modern tragedy.

Sony Pictures Classics 'Capote' A The verdict: A portrait of the artist as tragic hero, with a compelling performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Director: Bennett Miller Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper, Clifton Collins Jr., Bruce Greenwood Run time: 98 minutes Release date: Sept. 30, 2005 Rating: R for some violent images and brief strong language. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime [an error occurred while processing this directive]

Based on Gerald Clarke's exhaustively researched biography, Capote pares away all but 5 1/2 years of the writer's life, when the New York sophisticate — transplanted from the South — traveled to the rural Midwest to understand why Perry Smith and Dick Hickock went on a sudden killing spree, to report and perhaps exploit the story and to invent a new literary genre.

It is a fascinating case study, which should intrigue anyone with an inquisitive mind and an interest in the creative process. What puts Capote in the more rarefied territory of the year's best films, though, is the title performance by perennial supporting player Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Talented Mr. Ripley, Magnolia), which goes far beyond impersonation to the dark heart of the artist.

Yes, he gets the high-pitched voice right and the queenish mannerisms, but Hoffman builds on those external cues to create a portrait of the ultimate outsider, who gets these itinerant cutthroats to open up to him. Of course, they are using each other. Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) expects the media attention that Capote draws can lead to a retrial, Capote knows a bestseller when he sees it. But he also senses that the book needs a punchy ending, the kind that only an execution can deliver.

Badly in need of a friend, Smith learns to trust Capote, even if the author cannot bring himself to tell his subject the title he has chosen for the book. In addition, there is an undercurrent of sexual attraction between the two men that electrifies their furtive meetings.

Accompanying Capote and occasionally smoothing over his odd, off-putting ways is his understanding friend Nelle Harper Lee (an ethereal Catherine Keener). She too is a writer, having penned but not yet published a novel Ñ something about a "mockingbird." She is content to live in Capote's shadow, but so wants his validation. Among the many heartbreaking scenes in Capote is the premiere of the film of her book, where she fishes for a compliment from her self-centered companion that he is unable or unwilling to offer.

Capote and Lee meet and gradually are accepted into the confidence of the local police chief (Chris Cooper), an invaluable asset to Capote's crime narrative. But the heart of Capote are his scenes with Smith and their psychological tug of war, which gains Capote the story he craves but leaves him broken and embittered. From the heights of literary acclaim, he falls victim to alcohol, becoming a television talk show celebrity and a caricature of himself.

Miller's filmmaking style is direct and unself-conscious. He and his camera stand out of the way observing, not that different from Capote's reporting methods. He knows his film does not need flashy angles or explosive confrontations and Hoffman's performance is similarly underplayed.

Eventually, the cumulative force of Capote's downward spiral registers on the actor and weighs on us all.