Review: Infamous (2006)

INFAMOUS
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: This is an account of Truman Capote's
investigation of the "In Cold Blood" murders.
Capote maneuvers people and events for his own
purposes. The film is as strangely unfocused as
its title is. Several of the artistic decisions
weaken the film. A good performance by Daniel
Craig is perhaps the film's major asset. Rating:
low +1 (-4 to +4) or 5/10

This is the story of Truman Capote (played by Toby Jones) writing
his "non-fiction novel" IN COLD BLOOD about the 1959 murders of
the Herbert Clutter family from Holcomb, Kansas. Capote
manipulates people and events to make the book better, but with
apparently little real care for the people involved in the crime
and its solution. Capote dresses in a near-feminine style and
talks in an almost baby-like manner, but he is able to play
people to get the results he wants. Here he wants to get to know
the captured killers of the Clutter family: Perry Smith (Daniel
Craig) and Dick Hickock (Lee Pace) and to know the police who
caught them. The story is of Capote using charm to be admitted
into the inner circle of the people important to the story and
using them.

It seems that director Douglas McGrath wanted to make a movie of
substantial length, just a minute or two short of two hours, but
did not have enough story to fill that time, as incredible as
that seems. Much of the film seems like time filler. The film
opens with Kitty Dean (Gwyneth Paltrow) singing a sad version of
Cole Porter's "What is This Thing Called Love". In the middle
she pauses as if pondering some sad memory, after a pause she
regains her composure and starts singing again, finishing the
song. What is her sorrow? What does this have to do with
anything? Well, shortly we see that she is a friend of Capote,
but we do not even hear their conversations. Then she drops out
of sight not to be heard from again. Why are we shown this?
Later we see Capote's elite friends trying this new dance, The
Twist. Anything positive that this sequence could have added
could have been added with a line of dialog. Watching middle-
aged celebrities doing The Twist--and the film seems to cast
modern celebrities as the celebrities of that time--speaks of a
director stalling.

Toby Jones's performance as Capote is just insufficient to carry
this film. In the early parts of the film it should convey
comedy, in the latter parts tragedy, and Jones just is not able
to make us feel either. He may be a good character actor, but in
this film he is out of his depth. His short stature and his
peculiar voice kept reminding me of the mad scientist in
children's cartoons. Sandra Bullock as Nelle Harper Lee seems to
fade into the background. The strongest performance is by Daniel
Craig who is by turns fragile and mean. I remember him best as
Paul Newman's cynical, trouble-making son in THE ROAD TO
PERDITION. He frequently plays roles well and has a hard edge,
though I liked him as poet Ted Hughes in SYLVIA. He is, of
course, James Bond in the upcoming CASINO ROYALE. Juliet
Stevenson is supposedly playing Diana Vreeland but her mannerisms
were what I thought could have been an extremely good impression
of Lauren Bacall.

The title INFAMOUS is a peculiar choice since at this point
nobody in the film is particularly infamous. Capote was known
more for eccentricity than for infamy. The killers were not
particularly well-known yet either.

I have gone this long without mentioning that this is, of course,
the second film to cover this subject matter. I did not want
that to influence this review, but some comparison should be
made. INFAMOUS was doomed by bad luck since the inception of the
production. Had this been the only film on the subject of
Capote's actions it would have been a reasonably interesting
account, though still very flawed. The fact that well into the
production the producers found that there was another film being
made on the same narrow subject and that it would be a first
class production had to have given the producers some bad nights.
The release of INFAMOUS was delayed a year so as not to be too
close to the release of CAPOTE. The producers could not beat
CAPOTE to release so the best they could manage was the year
delay. I think the fact that CAPOTE got the first release first
helped that film to some small degree, but it was an absolute
disaster for INFAMOUS.

Toby Jones's performance here as Capote seems more of a
caricature. Philip Seymour Hoffman in CAPOTE created a much more
interesting character. Where characterizations are different
they are less believable here. Perry Smith is almost an
intellectual and a frustrated artist in INFAMOUS, inconsistent
with all other versions to this point. Daniel Craig had his work
cut out for him trying to play both an artist and a cold-blooded
killer. Most accounts say that Capote really did have a sort of
charm. In this film he cannot get people interested in him until
he starts name-dropping. Then people are not so much interested
in Capote as in the Hollywood stars he knows. This film delivers
far less than CAPOTE did with much less of a feeling of
plausibility. I rate it a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 5/10.

Mark R. Leeper
mleeper RemoveThis @optonline.net
Copyright 2006 Mark R. Leeper