This kind of thing doesn't happen often, but in the past year, the world inherited two films about Truman Capote writing ""In Cold Blood."" The first, ""Capote,"" received multiple Academy Award nominations, and Philip Seymour Hoffman won for Best Actor. Yet the film only gave the illusion of greatness, as skilled filmmakers sometimes do. It chose not to judge Capote, but lacked the entertainment value to justify its ambiguity. Hoffman was excellent, but he always is. Now there's ""Infamous,"" starring Toby Jones as a shorter, skinnier Capote. It isn't an improvement.
In most ways these are the exact same movie: An entire family in small-town Kansas is murdered, and Capote leaves his pleasant New York existence to research the events. Accompanying him is author Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock), his lifelong friend. Once the killers are caught and confess, he begins interviewing them. He develops an almost sexual sensitivity towards Perry White, but comes to understand his book cannot end properly unless White is executed.
But while ""Capote"" suggested the eccentric author financed the murderers' multiple appeals and abruptly cut off funds to ensure their deaths, ""Infamous"" is content to have Capote marinating in anxiety until the verdict comes in. It presents the Capote-White relationship as more overtly sexual, and Capote's personality is more sexualized, too. Jones makes far more innuendos than Hoffman, and his sexuality is more of a point.
Is Jones as good at being Capote as Hoffman was? No, although the performance would seem like copycatting no matter what. Jones is slightly more caricatured and has a harder time being really emotional on film; he doesn't seem able to cry on cue. Jones looks a little more like Capote, but as Leonardo DiCaprio showed in ""The Aviator,"" you don't need to look like someone to play them effectively.
Harper Lee, played by Catherine Keener in ""Capote,"" is played by Sandra Bullock here. Her part is bigger than Keener's, and she brings more heart to the character. The best moment in ""Infamous"" is a reflective monologue she delivers at the end. ""Infamous"" can claim one slight improvement over ""Capote,"" in regards to how it develops Lee. But all things considered, it's a worse film. Jones isn't as capable as Hoffman, who held his film together and drew attention away from its instabilities.
There's room for ambivalence toward both ""Infamous"" and ""Capote."" There's a sense this material was chosen by pretentious people telling a story no one knew they wanted to hear. The real question is whether Truman Capote really has an inherent fascination about him. There was a time when his name was a household phrase, but that time has faded. He's a terrible subject for a movie, because he's disgustingly unsympathetic from any angle. Any film about him can't ever be about more than itself. Both films think they're about obsession, lust, fame or all these things. But they're really just about Capote starting his book, finishing it and doing what some have suggested he did in between. How long can that be interesting for? Certainly not as long as two boring, self-impressed movies.
