Trigger warning: I go into some pretty gruesome descriptions of true crime, the death penalty and the history of lynchings in this movie post, so if you need to skip reading this movie review for the sake of your mental health, I totally understand. I promise. It’s also long as fuck, so you might be better off playing pickleball or making yourself a delicious cheese sandwich than reading this long-ass movie post.
Oh. My. Gosh. I just finished watching the movie, Capote, with Philip Seymour Hoffman. It blew me away. I had been wanting to see this movie for a really long time. When I was around 11 or 12, I watched the Academy Awards Ceremony, and Hilary Swank was reading the nominees for Best Actor. Hoffman was nominated for his role as the author Truman Capote in the film Capote, and even though they showed just a little clip of his performance, it was pretty powerful. He ended up winning the award for Best Actor that evening, and I actually rewatched the speech on YouTube because it was so moving and it made me miss Hoffman. If you don’t know Philip Seymour Hoffman, he was an American actor who starred in drama films such as Doubt, Moneyball and Capote. I don’t have an extensive knowledge of his filmography, and there are many movies that he was in that I still want to watch, like Synecdoche, New York and Moneyball. but I absolutely loved his performance as a priest in the film Doubt with Amy Adams and Meryl Streep. Like his performance in that movie, his performance in Capote gave me chills. Like, long after the movie was over, I was just stunned into silence. I could not believe what I had just watched, and while as a kid I wasn’t old enough to see Capote (it was rated R and as a 12-year-old who didn’t watch any true crime shows or movies, the subject matter would have gone over my head) seeing it now as a grown adult was still a deeply haunting but powerful experience. Honestly, I miss Philip Seymour Hoffman. Watching Capote reminded me of the incredible legacy that he left for the world of cinema, years after his death.
The film focuses on Truman Capote’s journey writing his famous book, In Cold Blood, which investigates the 1959 murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. (I haven’t read In Cold Blood yet, but when I was at an orchestra rehearsal in high school, one of the orchestra members I was talking to had brought a copy of the book with her because she was reading it for English class.) The movie opens with a young woman going into a house and finding the dead body of a girl in bed, with blood splattered on her wall. Shocked, she leaves the room. The scene switches to New York City, where famed American author Truman Capote is entertaining a crowd of writers and intellectuals and recounting a conversation he had with fellow author James Baldwin, who was writing a book about a Black man and a Jewish man having a relationship with each other, and how he worried about it being too controversial for readers. The next day, Truman reads the papers and finds out that a family was murdered in Holcomb, Kansas and police are investigating who murdered the family. Truman has a large following of people who love his books, but instead of writing within his comfort zone of fiction, he decides to write a non-fiction book covering the Holcomb family murders. His childhood friend, Nelle Harper Lee, writer of To Kill a Mockingbird, assists him in his research for the book, which involves not just talking to the witnesses in Kansas but to the very men who murdered the Clutter family, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith. Of course, the movie is a biographical drama, and usually when you direct a movie you take artistic or creative liberties with the script and the characters, so I had to understand that there were probably going to be some inaccuracies in the film. Then again, I am not a scholar in American history and didn’t know anything about the Clutter family murders, so all I knew about In Cold Blood was from watching this film.
The movie shows the psychological and emotional toll that writing the book and investigating the murders took on Truman Capote, especially because the court denies Perry and Richard’s appeal and sentences them to execution. I honestly thought about stopping the movie just four minutes shy of its end because the execution scene looked like it was going to be unbearable to watch. Of course, what Perry and Richard did was inexcusable. They should not have murdered the Clutter family. But when Truman visits Perry in jail, he gets to connect with Perry’s humanity even after this awful crime that he and Richard committed. Perry’s sister even warns Truman that he needs to be careful around Perry, because Perry can come off as being this innocent nice person, but he would have killed Truman in a heartbeat if he had the chance. Truman also has to be careful about divulging too much about his personal life, such as his mother’s suicide, because he is starting to become close to Perry, which blurs the boundaries between them. It also puts a strain on Truman’s relationship with his partner, Jack, because Truman is so focused on his research and his visits to Perry’s jail cell that he doesn’t have much time to spend with Jack, who is also a writer. This reminded me of another movie I watched called Trumbo, which is about an American screenwriter named Dalton Trumbo who is blacklisted as a Communist by the U.S. government and struggles to maintain his reputation and keep working while under government surveillance. Trumbo is so busy with his work that he writes his screenplay in a bathtub, much to the frustration of his family. He doesn’t have time to celebrate his daughter’s 16th birthday because he is busy working on his screenplay, and the family can’t do normal daily stuff because Trumbo has to always deal with the press invading his personal life and interrogating his involvement in the Communist party. It is frustrating for his children and his wife because they just want to spend time with him, but he is under so much scrutiny that they can’t just kick back and relax and enjoy private life as a family.
I think the hardest scene to watch was the minutes leading up to the execution of Perry Smith. Truman is devastated when he finds out that the court rejected Perry and Richard’s appeal and is sentencing them to death, so devastated that he cannot get out of bed. He feels ashamed that he didn’t do more to help their case, to prevent them from getting executed, and he tells Perry and Richard this in the holding room before the execution. But Perry and Richard understand that he did what he could, and they confront their last moments with (literal) gallows humor. I tried to get through the execution scene, but it was way too hard. Watching Truman’s pained expression as he watches Perry get hanged before his very eyes sent chills through my spine and my stomach felt queasy as I watched Perry’s dead body hanging from the ceiling. It reminded me of when I watched this movie called Just Mercy, which is based on the true story of a Black lawyer named Bryan Stevenson who fought against racial injustice in the criminal system and to overturn wrongful convictions of people of color, namely the wrongful conviction of a man named Walter McMillian, who was accused of a murder he didn’t commit and was sentenced to death. Fortunately, McMillian was released from death row, but there is one particular scene in the movie that still haunts me to this day. In the movie, Bryan tries to overturn the conviction of another death row inmate named Herbert Lee Richardson, but his appeal to release Herbert is denied, and Herbert is sentenced to death through electric chair. Bryan witnesses the execution of Herbert, which is a traumatic experience. However, as a passive viewer of the movie, I closed my eyes instead of watching the actual execution because I knew it was going to be too emotionally difficult to watch. It was painful because in the scene, Herbert, while in the execution chamber, requests that they play music so that his fellow inmates wouldn’t have to hear him being electrocuted to death. Honestly, watching movies like Capote and Just Mercy made me wonder about the ethics of the death penalty. I remember when I was in ninth grade, and I wore an Amnesty International T-shirt that said, “Rock, Paper, Scissors” and below it “Rope, Chair, Needle,” with a caption below that reading “the death penalty is not something to play with.” I hadn’t done much extensive reading on the topic of the death penalty, but all I know is that it can be a very contested issue and everyone is going to have their own perspectives on whether the death penalty is justified punishment for those who have committed a crime. Some argue that the death penalty is justified because it brings justice and closure for the families and victims of murder. In the film, there is a chilling scene (then again, the whole movie is bone-chilling) where Truman walks into the room where the Clutter family’s coffins are placed, and he sees four coffins lined up next to each other. It is a heartbreaking scene, and he also looks through some grisly photos of the murder victims lying in pools of blood with graphic gunshot wounds. When Perry finally decides to describe the night that he and Richard murdered the Clutter family, it is very hard to sit through, and they show the murders happening in a flashback. Because I am a weakling and squeamish, I also ended up closing my eyes during this scene.
However, one of the arguments against the death penalty is that it doesn’t do much to deter crime and that it is much more expensive than lifelong imprisonment as the other option for punishment. Another is that the death penalty also tends to discriminate against poor people and people of color, who often cannot afford to hire an effective lawyer. I was reading a Brittanica article about the death penalty, and it quotes that Bryan Stevenson said that the death penalty is “the stepchild of lynching.” If you read the history of lynchings in American history, I must warn you it is very disturbing. When I was in my sophomore year of college, we had to read an excerpt from an academic book that described lynchings of Black people in graphic detail, and to this day, while I don’t remember the name of the book, the excerpt we read still haunts me to this day. White American families loved enjoying picnics where they watched Black men, women and children get hung from trees. During my fall semester of college, junior year, the professor set up a little museum in the library with racist artifacts on display so that we could learn how pervasive racism against Black people was not just in the U.S. but also around the world. These artifacts included old postcards of white families enjoying their lemonade, chicken salad sandwiches and whatever the fuck else white people ate at that horrible time in history, while watching with sadistic glee as an innocent Black man, woman or child got swung from a tree and had his/ her flesh burned off. As a young Black person, I was angered, hurt and heartbroken reading about this history and encountering these artifacts, and I nearly threw up when I saw that these postcards actually existed at some point in history, but as much as I wanted to remain blissfully ignorant of this history, I simply could not. Sure, reading about it made me hate being Black during that whole junior year, but since then I have come to realize that no amount of racism can take away my inherent dignity as a Black person in this country.
Another argument of the death penalty is that it is a form of torture that is immoral. Religious figures like rabbi and former public defender Benjamin Zober argue that regardless of whether it brings justice to the family or the victims, the death penalty still involves the taking of another human life. As a Buddhist, I grew up with the philosophy that each person’s life has inherent dignity, and reflecting on a lot of the violence I witness in society, I have realized that it stems from a lack of respect for the inherent dignity of human life. The death penalty involves brutal methods of torture and inflicts pain and suffering on inmates. In Capote, when Truman visits Perry in jail, he has starved himself for a month because he cannot go on living and he is emaciated. Truman, not wanting to see him starve to death, goes to the grocery store and buys a can of baby food and feeds a spoonful to Perry so that he can get even just a little food in his system. He gets to know Perry as a human being even though he and Richard committed a horrendous murder of an innocent family. The actor who played Perry Smith, Clifton Collins Jr., is a phenomenal actor in this movie. He shows the pain and shame that Perry experiences while in his jail cell, reflecting on that grim moment when he and Richard murdered the family, and the isolation he experiences in jail. Early in the film, he is held in a jail cell within a lady’s house and Truman gives him aspirin, hoping that Perry will trust him enough to open up about that night that he and Richard murdered the Clutter family. Truman opens up about himself so that he can find common ground with Perry, so that Perry will trust him enough to give him permission to talk about the murder in the book. As he continues to visit Perry in jail, Truman realizes that Perry is a real human being who is grappling with a traumatic past. It makes me think that people who commit murder don’t usually just go out and kill people for funsies. Like I said, I avoid true crime podcasts, movies and TV shows like the plague. I was in group therapy one time, and we were talking about what we do for self-care after a stressful day. Someone in the group said their form of self-care was watching a TV series that aired on Netflix called Dahmer- Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. I wouldn’t honestly have the stomach to watch that show. Hell, I couldn’t even read a Wikipedia article on Dahmer without wanting to run in a corner, crawl up in fetal position and cry “Mommy! I’m scared!” And as much as I love Zac Efron as Troy in High School Musical and Link in Hairspray, I can’t watch him play Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, even though I respect his willingness to expand his range as an actor by playing darker, more mature roles like Ted Bundy.
Many, if not all, of the cases of serial killers and mass murderers involve the killers having some sort of traumatic childhood in which they faced abuse, emotional neglect and abandonment by their parents, mental illness, or the death of a parent or family member. Of course, not everyone with a traumatic childhood or a mental illness goes on a rampant shooting spree at a high school or Walmart, or dismembers other people for consumption (sorry, I had to include Jeffrey Dahmer in this. We are talking about true crime, after all!) There are plenty of people who manage to go to therapy and talk to someone so they can process difficult traumatic events from their past. They even use their traumatic experiences to help someone else going through harrowing experiences that are difficult to cope with. But of course, Capote was set during a time when someone couldn’t just cough up $100 to sit on a therapist’s couch and talk about their fucked-up childhood. Perry kept a lot of his trauma to himself and it is hard to discuss trauma, so at first he didn’t want to open up to Truman because all these events from his past–his mother’s alcoholism and death from drinking, the suicides of two of his family members, his sister’s estrangement from him, not to mention living as a Native American man in a world that still hadn’t grappled with centuries of the genocide and intergenerational trauma of Native American communities–were painful and he had no one to talk with about them who he felt he could trust. Truman was the only person that Perry felt he could trust to tell his side of the story, and as the epilogue of the movie concludes, In Cold Blood was a best-selling book and paved the way for other true crime stories to be told.
It took a LOT out of Truman, though. He couldn’t even celebrate the success of Harper Lee’s best-selling novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, being made into a movie. Even when Jack tells him to focus on celebrating Harper’s success and not on his own personal problems, Truman sits alone, ruminating about the case and his book, unable to find the time to celebrate Harper’s accomplishments. When Harper politely approaches him about it, asking him how he liked the movie, he blows her off, leaving her feeling sad and unrecognized by her friend. Even though she helped him with the research of In Cold Blood, she also accomplished something of her own worth celebrating, but because the research and visits with Perry had taken such a toll on Capote, he doesn’t have the energy to be present with Harper and celebrate her achievement with her. You could probably argue, Wow, Truman was a total asshole for dismissing his fellow writer friend’s success, but at the same time, as much as it sucked for me to watch that scene of the movie where Truman blows off Harper and doesn’t give her credit for her success in getting her own book published, I can’t imagine the stress that Truman went through, writing a book about a true crime and being unable to get two men off of death row. I haven’t read To Kill a Mockingbird (sadly), but I remember seeing the black-and-white movie when I was younger and being blown away by the acting and the storyline. I understand the movie was supposed to focus on Truman Capote’s writing of In Cold Blood, but I kind of wish that the movie had also taken more time to celebrate Harper Lee’s work as an author. She did Truman a huge favor by helping him do the research for the book, so she should at least get some recognition for working on her own manuscript while helping her friend write his. Then again, they only had a little under two hours of history to cram into the movie, so they probably didn’t have time to focus on Harper Lee’s friendship with Truman. They only had screen time to focus only the process of writing In Cold Blood. I loved Catherine Keener’s role as Harper Lee, though. I loved her in the film Get Out. Her role in that movie scared the shit out of me, and frankly I can’t watch that movie again because it was terrifying (also, because racism is real, not a fictional supernatural possessed killer doll who wears overalls and runs around with a knife).
Overall, though, the movie Capote was phenomenal, and even with its bleak subject matter, I think it was worth a watch. I am glad I decided to not stay up late and watch the movie, though, because I don’t think I could have fallen asleep after watching a movie about something so harrowing and disturbing. It reminds me of when I watched Killers of the Flower Moon. I had to pause the movie multiple times not for its 3-hour-runtime, but because it was incredibly disturbing and horrifying to watch Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert de Niro team up as Ernest and Bill Burkhart to poison, maim and butcher countless Native American people and steal their fortunes. But I had to watch it because I didn’t know about the Osage murders growing up, and you can’t learn about American history without learning about the genocide of Native Americans and the intergenerational trauma that Indigenous communities have had to grapple with for centuries. I didn’t know much about Truman Capote other than his book, Breakfast Tiffany’s, so this was a really intriguing movie. It was also timely that I watched this movie this month because it is LGBTQIA+ Pride Month and while they don’t dive deep into Truman’s life growing up as a gay man in the movie, the film does show his relationship with his partner, Jack, and how they navigate challenges in their relationship as Truman buries himself in work. The music score was fitting with the movie’s bleak and grave subject matter. It was somber piano music, and it gave me goosebumps. Even though I miss Philip Seymour Hoffman, I am so glad that he won the Oscar for Capote.
Capote. Year Released: 2005. Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes. Directed by Bennett Miller. Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr. and Chris Cooper. Rated R for some violent images and brief strong language.
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