Until Crash crept into the Oscar race for reasons that will forever be something of a mystery, I thought Bennett Miller’s Capote was going to be this year’s most bafflingly overpraised film.  When I saw it way back in July of last year, I was distressed by the way Futterman’s script appropriated the narrative spine of In Cold Blood as a means to pillory Truman Capote for his destructive self-absorption, the punch line, delivered near the end of the film by Catherine Keener’s Harper Lee, being that he didn’t realize the extent of his narcissism until he was well on the way to drinking himself into artistic paralysis (and, ultimately, a career as a late night talk show guest).  That’s an amazingly small distance to travel just to lay into a guy who’s no longer around to defend himself, even if he did have it coming. 

A second viewing of the film confirmed my suspicion that Bennett Miller’s superb direction (along with that Oscar winning lead performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman) got this derivative-at-its-core bit of character assassination to go down much more agreeably than it deserved.  The first time around, I was too busy fuming over the wasted effort; this time, with expectations adequately adjusted, I quickly fell in love with the Miller’s elegantly spare visuals, which capture the unremittingly barren flatness of a Midwestern winter so acutely that the film practically gives off its own wind chill.  Considering the technical ineptitude of Miller’s awful first feature, The Cruise, I’d be tempted to lavish most of the praise on his cinematographer Adam Kimmel, but Kimmel’s never been this overwhelmingly great.  Miller’s an equally adept stager of simple conversation, evincing an unerring eye for reaction that maintains a palpable level of tension where other directors might let the scene go slack.  In fact, the most memorable sequences for me aren’t Capote’s tête-à-tête’s with Perry (a solid Clifton Collins Jr.), but the early moments in which the author name drops his way into the Dewey family’s good graces, which are far more tense due to the way Miller cuts a humoring-but-not-entirely-disarmed Alvin (Chris Cooper) into the scene.  These are the touches that truly elevate the film.

Still, once the film slips into the doldrums with its subject, Capote completely runs aground.  Perry’s confession is distracting because it just doesn’t play right without Robert Blake “crying” via Conrad Hall’s brilliant lighting mistake, while Capote’s tortured epiphany, that he wouldn’t have an ending without Dick and Perry’s execution, doesn’t stick.  All the craftsmanship in the world – behind and in front of the camera – can’t fix Futterman’s folly. 

Capote may have been Hoffman’s tour de force, but I’m convinced it’ll resonate through the years as Bennett Miller’s coming out.

Sony Home Entertainment has done a superb job with the visual transfer, while the Dolby Digital audio is pristine.  Be forewarned:  if you start listening to Miller and Hoffman’s commentary, you’re doomed to listen to it all the way through.  Both men are just forthcoming enough about their process and various misgivings to keep you fully engaged.

Keane

No filmmaker has exhibited greater empathy for the mentally ill than Lodge Kerrigan, and his third finished feature, Keane (he directed a fourth, In God’s Hands, that was never completed due to negative damage), is a devastating portrait of a man consigned to madness following the abduction of his only child.  Kerrigan shoots most of the film in extremely tight quarters, swarming his lead, Damian Lewis, as he scurries about New York City’s Port Authority trying to account for his missing daughter, who may have disappeared a week or years ago.  The vagueness suits Keane’s malady; his is a purgatorial scenario from which he messily plots deliverance by kidnapping his neighbor’s child.  It is an agonizing journey, but one that forces us to examine the sad circumstances that can drive an individual into such a hopeless state.  Kerrigan and Lewis relentlessly get at the humanity of Keane, so that every time he tumbles backward after taking a cautious step forward, we despair at his defeat.

But Kerrigan sets himself apart from the Hollywood impulse by imagining Keane as a flawed man; he keeps his demons at bay with alcohol, but then invites them to misbehave through a nasty coke habit.  At his worst, Keane hooks up with a sad young woman at a nightclub, lures her into a bathroom stall to bump a few rails, and takes advantage of her for his own sexual gratification.  He’s a lost soul, but one who’s probably still aware of his dishonorable predatorial instincts.  Scenes like this add an important layer of menace to a character who might otherwise be blandly pathetic.  And while I think Kerrigan goes a bit too far in the name of dramatic tension by employing narrative misdirection intended to suggest Keane might harbor mildly psychopathic tendencies, he always pulls back to find moments of unexpected sweetness, such as an ice skating excursion that proves Keane, when unperturbed, would probably make a damn good father.

But that day has passed.  Kerrigan has no illusions about healing Keane; he only wants to give him a small measure of redemption.  Regardless of whether he gets there, the time spent with the character, as piercingly portrayed by Lewis, is uncommonly illuminating.  Keane is the kind of movie that makes sifting through a year’s worth of formula garbage worthwhile.  (Big ups to Steven Soderbergh for getting together the financing for a film that never had a chance to sniff profit.)

Capote and Keane both street to DVD March 21st, 2006.