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The easiest role for an actor to play is a historical figure - we have no idea how Julius Caesar really sounded, how he moved his body, punctuated his speech, bit his lip, walked into a room, held his cigarette. The hardest role is the living, or recently deceased, celebrity whom we watched, heard, studied, mimicked and thought we understood. JFK, Martin Luther King, Ray Charles, and, above all, the inventor of self referential celebrity, Truman Capote (with apology to Andy Warhol and, of course, Noel Coward)..

After exploding to meteoric fame with his novella Breakfast at Tiffany's, Capote became the New York café society's darling, heir to Coward's gay-man-child-bon-vivant. He drank and held court with the best of New York, which just also happened to be the nexus of television in the early 60s. Before long Capote was the quintessential modern celebrity, famous for being famous. And he did it all before our eyes.

Philip Seymour Hoffman does not so much play Capote as become him. And not just in mannerism, no mean feat, but in personality, because we are convinced that Hoffman feels what Capote felt, cries over the lies, accepts his moral failings. For a short story writer-raconteur from New Orleans, Capote found himself at the center of a nationally enthralling multiple homicide, facing the ultimate journalist's Faustian dilemma: if he perpetrates a lie for the sake of exposing the truth, is he ever worthy of redemption? Capote, in the end, concluded that he wasn't; he never wrote another book. He descended into drunkenness and died a lonely soul. This is not the stuff of Holly Golightly.

I saw this picture at the Toronto Film Festival with Hoffman, Catherine Keener and director Bennett Miller in attendance. Though they had seen it many many times before, it was obvious even they were moved by it and by our reaction. As we stood and applauded them, we turned to one another, glowing in the realization that we had witnessed an amazing performance.

We knew Truman Capote. We watched him live on television. Truman Capote was (we imagined) our friend. Mr. Hoffman, you are Truman Capote.

I saw a press screening of this film recently, and was highly impressed by its moving account of the period in Truman Capote's life during which he wrote 'In Cold Blood'. The direction by the relatively unknown Bennett Miller is personal, evocative and affecting, but without being over-dramatic or saccharine. This is helped immensely by Philip Seymour Hoffmann's incredible performance as Capote, as well as solid acting from Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr., and Chris Cooper. Cooper plays K.B.I. Agent Alvin Dewey with perhaps a bit too much intensity, given his relatively small amount of screen time, but the portrayal nonetheless comes off as heart-felt.

The cinematography by Adam Kimmel is suitably gray and moody, with many evocative views of the flat Kansas plains, but most of the screen time is spent with the camera focused on Hoffmann - all of it time well spent.

While I haven't read the biography by Gerald Clarke on which it's based, the script seems to hit enough salient details to evoke Capote's frame of mind, without inundating the audience with more than would fit in a feature-length film. I suppose one of my only complaints about the film would be that at times the conversations take on a sheen of Hollywood, saying things for dramatic impact that perhaps might not have been said in real life. But then again, I never met Capote, so who knows for sure.

All in all, this was a deeply engrossing film, and one I would highly recommend, especially if you're a fan of Truman Capote.

Director Bennet Miller's "Capote" is a film that shows great intelligence in the way it captured the essence of Truman Capote, a man who achieved fame and notoriety with most of the fiction he wrote. This film concentrates in the period of his life in which he got obsessed by a notorious murder case of the fifties about the murder of a family in Kansas.

Dan Futterman has written the screen play based on the book by Gerald Clarke. The film is an account about the writing of the novel "In Cold Blood" that showed how the two young men who committed the heinous crime are caught, processed and hanged for their actions.

If you haven't watched the film, perhaps you would like to stop here.

When the film opens we get a vision of a lonely house in the distance. This being the Midwest, we are given a flat expanse devoid of elevations anywhere. The camera takes us to that lonely house as a young woman comes calling for her friend that lives in there. Not getting any response, she goes in to a room upstairs where she discovers her friend has been killed. The colors are dark, as is the tone of the film.

Truman Capote, who had been connected to the New Yorker magazine, sees the article in the N.Y. Times and gets interested. This case that shocked the country, at the time, shows a promise for the writer. The next time we meet him, he is in the small town in Kansas accompanied by his good friend and steadying influence, Nell Harper Lee, a writer.

By becoming friendly with the sheriff's wife, Mr. Capote gets a privilege by having access to the two murderers. Truman is clearly deeply affected by his relationship with Perry Smith, a handsome dark man who shows a lot of intensity. By gaining their trust, Capote is able to put together his best selling book "In Cold Blood", which will revolutionize American letters in the way the two criminals are portrayed.

Truman Capote, while pursuing the completion of his book, doesn't come clean to Perry Smith. In fact, when questioned about things he has learned, Capote gives evasive answers because he is not prepared to share with his main subject things that clearly should have been clarified from the start.

Watching the brilliant take of Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote on the screen, brought to mind another great actor, Meryl Streep, who like Mr. Hoffman is a chameleon in the interpretation of a character. Mr. Hoffman is perfect as the writer because he has captured every mannerism and the speech inflection of Truman Capote. Catherine Keener is perfect as Nelle, the true friend and companion. Bruce Greenwood plays Truman Capote's companion Jack Dunphy. Chris Cooper is totally wasted as Sheriff Dewey.

Adam Kimmel excellent cinematography contributes to the atmosphere the director gave the film because of the use of muted colors in what appear to be the bleak winter of the Midwest.

This is not a biography of Truman Capote, but rather a biography of his last complete major work "In Cold Blood." I read this book as a teenager and thought it brilliant and disturbing. This film does a wonderful job of depicting the moral ambiguity of Capote's work, his egotism, and the life history and inner conflicts which allowed him to create this great work. All the same, the subject matter here is really not explored in the depths it deserves, and the film sometimes loses its focus in the depth and quality of its performances.

Hoffman has already won a number of awards for his performance. I have no qualms about this - he's a great actor and this is a challenging and powerful role played to the hilt. However, I also want to point out the tremendous supporting cast. Catherine Keener and Clifton Collins are both deserving of recognition for their intense portrayals of Harper Lee and Perry Smith.

If you're a fan of Capote, or a fan of In Cold Blood, you will enjoy this, though it isn't really going to show you anything that you were not aware of. If you are the sort who goes to movies you're not necessarily that interested in just because a great performance is involved (like me in this case), you will likely enjoy Capote.

Prior to watching Capote I had very little exposure to the actual works of the writer, I have read Breakfast at Tiffanys and was not bowled over. However I approached the movie with optimism, I liked Philip Seymour Hoffman in movies like The Big Lebowski and was curious to see how a leading role would suit him. My feelings now having seen this movie is that he is and still remains a good supporting actor.

I understand that many feel his portrayal of Truman Capote was spot on and true to every nuance of Truman himself, but there is something about the movie which I feel doesn't do justice to the themes and the man who is being portrayed. The movie hinges on whether you can tolerate Truman Capote as a personality and it is my opinion that this is where the movie fails. Philip Sermour Hoffman portrays Capote as cold and career driven but has the emotional sensitivity to cry at his subjects execution. This alone is not enough to convince me that Capote is as complex and intelligent and perhaps scheming as the movie makes out.

Here is the main conflict of interest in the movie, at no point in the movie did the director sympathise with the murderers, neither did we feel Capote truly sympathise with the two men on death row, yet we are made to believe that Capote was battling with his conscience and by the end of the movie was eventually destroyed as a writer by his inability to come to terms with his actions towards these culprits. I have assumed this was the intended message of the movie but at no point is this battle of wills, or guilt ever portrayed on the screen. What we have is a very physical transformation of an actor into a Capote character that acts in a way that we assume reminds us of the great writer. There is no exploration of the theme of capital punishment, no reflection on the content of his novel 'In cold blood', no volley of ideas between subject and writer, but only a by numbers recount of events and perhaps a feeling of irritation towards Capote as a cowardly, egotistical, lime light hugging snob of the New York elite.

This is not award winning material, this is an average account of an interesting figure during an integral time in his career. Perhaps reading In Cold Blood would add some clarity to the subject but for a movie which seemed to promise so much in premise, it is disheartening that we have to go back to the source to make up our minds.