.MOVIE LISTINGS | MOVIE REVIEW ARCHIVE | THEATER INFO This Thing Called Infamous Another Truman Capote flick craves, and deserves, our attention BY SUZI STEFFEN INFAMOUS: Written and directed by Douglas McGrath.Cinematography by Bruno DeBonnell. Music, Rachel Portman. Starring Toby Jones, Daniel Craig, Sandra Bullock, Sigourney Weaver, Juliet Stevenson, Hope Davis, Isabella Rossellini, Lee Pace, Jeff Daniels, Peter Bogdanovich, Gwyneth Paltrow. Warner Independent Pictures, 2006. R. 110 minutes. A mint-green cocktail shines in the opening seconds of Infamous, a sparkling shot of something joyous, something bright — perhaps something jaded — just before Truman Capote (Toby Jones) and Babe Paley (Sigourney Weaver) settle in to watch Kitty Dean (Gwyneth Paltrow) sing Cole Porter. The song begins happily enough in the glittering world where Capote and his society women dine. Truman Capote (Toby Jones) and Babe Paley (Sigourney Weaver) show their softer sides. But darkness lingers under the glow. Paltrow's Dean slows and falters in the midst of the song. Truman and Babe turn concerned faces to the singer, who wraps an arm around herself as she haltingly plumbs her despair. But are her tears artificial or heartfelt? Do they well from her loneliness or spring from a desire to impress the sophisticated crowd? Perhaps it's a combination, for the crowd is both impressed and moved. If art affects its audience and hews to a standard of excellence, does it truly matter if the practitioner feints or expresses real emotion? Infamous believes, far more than last year's brilliant Capote, that indeed it does. At the heart of this fine, fascinating film lies the uncertainty of making a public display of private emotion, of both baring and protecting the soul during the pursuit of lasting creation. The script comes from George Plimpton's oral history book Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. Director and screenwriter Douglas McGrath (Nicholas Nickleby) portrays his characters occasionally speaking directly to the camera, recalling Capote, as if telling their stories to Plimpton. These interludes give the audience a break from Capote's relentless personality, a personality Jones embodies with startling thoroughness. As Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock) speaks to the camera, she says that every time a writer produces work, "a little bit of you dies." Knowing that Lee's and Capote's careers faded — after To Kill a Mockingbird and In Cold Blood, respectively — makes her admission all the more poignant. But the delights of this movie are multifaceted. For one thing, the first half is hilarious, devastatingly so. And, whether the camera adores a fashionable apartment or a bleak wall of processed cheese, the cinematography is riveting. Bullock, underutilized in many movies, is a revelation here, her Lee a marvel of quiet, tweedy beauty. The society "swans" — seriously superb Weaver, pitch-perfect Juliet Stevenson as Diana Vreeland, smartly reserved Hope Davis as Slim Keith and the ever gorgeous Isabella Rossellini as Marella Agnelli — lend flair and a privileged pathos to the film. Peter Bogdanovich as the quiet but not joyless Bennett Cerf is priceless. As Capote's partner Jack Dunphy, John Benjamin Hickey combines nervousness and anguish in a moving performance. Jones' Capote, mincing and swishing and full of self-importance, learns how to deal with the folks in Holcomb, Kan., where a farm family is brutally murdered in November of 1959 and where Capote and Lee go in search of one Very Big Story. Jeff Daniels gives taciturn Detective Alvin Dewey more warmth than did Chris Cooper in Capote, and Bethlyn Gerard as Marie Dewey has a marvelous "meet cute" scene with Jones. But after the murderers are caught, the movie changes from charmingly exotic to alarmingly intense, hanging on Capote's relationship to killer Perry Smith (Daniel Craig). What, exactly, is the relationship? Capote grows fascinated after Perry insults his writing and injures his pride. Later, McGrath insinuates that Capote's well-known taste for rough trade influences his time with Perry. Craig's performance is stunning: The dangerous, wounded, deluded, angry and vulnerable Perry threatens to take over the movie just as his character did Capote's book. McGrath pulls the focus back to Capote although the scene of Perry singing "There's a Goldmine in the Sky" will sear itself into your soul. And what of Capote when his explosive book hits the big time? How much of his soul is gone along with those sentenced to die? The final scene convincingly demonstrates the price on Capote's soul of his artistic investment and the toll of his shining society world, with its constant, dark undertow. Infamous opens Friday, Nov. 3 at the Bijou.
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