Infamous

In 1959 Truman Capote reads about the murder of a family in Kansas and goes there. The most talkative man in the New York salons lands in a town that talks to nobody. After the killers are caught he goes into the prison, begins speaking with Perry Smith, and realises he has to wait for him to die in order to finish the book. The subject is not the murder but a writer falling in love with his source. The film builds the relationship between Capote and Smith openly as an emotional attachment and reads the cost of the book through it. The form is double: false interviews, played by actors as the real people around Capote, cut into the dramatic scenes. That choice gives the film the tone of society gossip and adds a voice always narrating the events from outside. Its misfortune is timing. Capote, about the same events, came out a year earlier and won Philip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar; this film came second and never got the attention it deserved. Toby Jones is physically far closer to Capote and builds a person rather than an impersonation. Daniel Craig, who plays Perry Smith, was not yet known as Bond when it was shot. Sandra Bullock plays Harper Lee. Douglas McGrath directs. Who it is for: anyone curious about Capote or wanting to compare the two films. Who it is not for: viewers who will find the society-interview device redundant; the film keeps drifting back into drawing-room narration.