Remember Valmont, the adaptation of Dangerous Liasons that was released right after the Stephen Frears film? No? How about Robin Hood with Patrick Bergin, the one that ended up on TV while Robin Hood; Prince Of Thieves made millions in cinemas? There’s nothing worse than staggering out of the traps when the winner has already been declared, and Douglas McGrath’s Truman Capote biopic, arriving after last year’s highly regarded, Oscar-winning film, has something of the bridesmaid about it.
It is, however, a distinct entity at least. Toby Jones’ waspish turn in the central role seems worlds away from Philip Seymour Hoffman’s cool, cruel creation. This Capote is flamboyant and fun and, with uncanny accuracy, looks just like Yoda. When he arrives at a small Kansas town with a notion to write a book on a grisly quadruple homicide that has occurred there, Infamous assumes the form of a sophisticated fish-out-of-water comedy. Capote flounces about in silks delivering bon mots and finally wins the locals over with tales of arm-wrestling Bogart. Sandra Bullock, playing his travelling companion Harper Lee, certainly has more cause to break into giggles than Catherine Keener did in the same role. Inserts featuring fabulous talking heads from contemporary Manhattan (Rossellini, Weaver, et al) only serve to keep the party going.
The most pronounced difference between this and the earlier film arrives with the second act as the writer bonds with the two captured killers Smith and Hickok. While Capote might legitimately have been titled In Colder Blood, Toby Jones seems weak beside Daniel Craig’s Smith, a seething, darkly sexual presence to block out the lightness of earlier scenes. Director McGrath’s suggestion, following from the biography by George Plimpton, is that Capote was in love with Smith. This may add a certain frisson to the proceedings but as the killers’ execution day looms, the film is doomed to ask precisely the same questions about the ethics of writing and journalism as Last Year’s Model.
It’s a shame because Infamous is lucid and entertaining but like the tremendously odd opening musical number with Gwyneth Paltrow, it all seems a little superfluous.