Review of Infamous (2006) by Monsieur R — 12 Feb 2011

This film is not to be confused with the Oscar winning "Capote". Made a year earlier, "Capote" shows the actual crime up front, in detail and immediately. "Infamous" shows the crime in scant detail in the last third of the film. "Capote" was about the writing of his book while "Infamous" was about the author's personal character and attraction to a prisoner.

Perry, the butcher criminal that he really is, has been brought to the silver screen a victum of his father's neglect, someone he almost killed with a hammer. By the way, Perry is played brilliantly by Daniel Craig and he certainly can act as good as anyone I have seen in years.

But this film has the audacity to suggest that Capote and Perry were, in fact, lovers. This may, in fact, be possible since Perry is said to have wrote Capote for years. But the movie makes no doubt about it.

A title is supposed to reflect, in some way, a movie or book, or so we are told in Literature 101. "Infamous" speaks to what? Seemingly, to me, a virtual nervous breakdown by Capote. He never regained his form after his best seller "In Cold Blood". But this makes him Infamous?

Perhaps because we see Truman Capote betraying the confidence of anyone during a lunch date. He can't keep a secret. In confidence he swears he will never tell, but the next scene he is blabbering every detail to a lunch date.

The "Famous" Truman Capote, the author of "In Cold Blood" and "Breakfast at Tiffanys", among others, ultimately breaks down after years of waiting for two killers to reach the end of the line in a death sentence. Then, he is called upon the prisoners to witness their deaths by hanging, a grizzly and ghastly scene Capote can't watch in the case of his "lover" Perry.

This movie was made a year after the Oscar winning "Capote", which was to me, a far more gripping and graphic portrayl of Truman Capote's search for his novel. However, the two films are most different in the portrayl of the one killer, Perry, and Capote himself.

If you want a great, not just a good film, watch "Capote". If you want to see the collapse of the author, watch Infamous. Decide for yourself what "Infamous" really means.

This film examines Truman Capote the author, exagerated the gay-ness of him and has Sandra Bullock chain smoking cigarettes through the entire film (so silly and un-needed).

It covers the period from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, during which Truman Capote researched and wrote his bestseller In Cold Blood, a subject covered a year earlier in the film Capote.

NOTES about Infamous :

1) based on the 1997 book by George Plimpton, "Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career".

2) According to writer/director McGrath in his DVD commentary, many of the scenes in the movie, most notably a dramatic sexual encounter between Capote and inmate Perry, occurred only in McGrath's imagination.

3) Toby Jones won the London Film Critics Circle Award for British Actor of the Year. He also won the Best Actor Award at the Ibiza International Film Festival.

4) Rex Reed of The New York Observer opined, "They gave the Oscar to the wrong Truman Capote. I do not begrudge the versatile, popular Philip Seymour Hoffman his Oscar for playing the tiny terror in Capote, but he was doing an impression. In Infamous . . . a diminutive actor with a titanic talent named Toby Jones literally becomes the man himself.".

CAST.

Toby Jones as Truman Capote.

Sandra Bullock as Harper Lee.

Lee Pace as Richard Hickock.

Daniel Craig as Perry Smith.

Jeff Daniels as Alvin Dewey.

Peter Bogdanovich as Bennett Cerf.

Hope Davis as Slim Keith.

Isabella Rossellini as Marella Agnelli.

Juliet Stevenson as Diana Vreeland.

Sigourney Weaver as Babe Paley.

Michael Panes as Gore Vidal.

John Benjamin Hickey as Jack Dunphy.

Gwyneth Paltrow as Kitty Dean.

Directed by Douglas McGrath.

Produced by Christine Vachon.

Jocelyn Hayes.

Written by Douglas McGrath.

Book:

George Plimpton.

Music by Rachel Portman.

Cinematography Bruno Delbonnel.

Editing by Camilla Toniolo.

Running time 110 minutes.