Re-View: Capote (2005)

Twenty years ago, in my one-paragraph review of “Capote”, I summarized the conflict of this story in this one sentence: “[Capote] needs two men to die, so he can finish a book about their death.”

Looking back, I think my summary of the movie is also a window into the dubious nature of Truman Capote’s mission in writing his non-fiction bestseller “In Cold Blood.” After all, the movie is about Capote’s struggle in writing and finishing a book. The book itself is about two men who committed an awful quadruple murder and were tried and executed for it. Neither the book nor this movie is about the family that was murdered or the community they were a part of, the town of Holcomb, Kansas. And that reality, I now have realized after twenty years, is an awful thing. The family and community experienced a horrible crime and this dilettante from New York breezed into town to write a scandalous book about it as if the topic was fit for his urbane cocktail parties. I read that book and was struck how after the first few chapters that led up to the murder, the vast majority of it was about the criminals, and in particular Perry Smith, a man that seems to have captivated Capote (played here by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) for various reasons.

Capote’s first remarks to the lead detective Alvin Dewey (played here by Chris Cooper) include the unnecessary revelation that he doesn’t care if the perpetrators are ever caught. Alvin Dewey makes a point to inform Truman that he along with the general community care quite a lot about whether the perpetrators are caught. Truman has a generally hard time with getting people in the neighborhood to talk to him. He needs to use his research assistant Harper Lee (played by Catherine Keener and soon to be of To Kill a Mockingbird fame) to break the ice with people. It isn’t just that Truman has the affectation of a carefree homosexual that puts people off. In general, he doesn’t seem to understand that people may not be as interested in him as he is in himself. There is a good quote that is in every trailer to this movie in which Truman says “Ever since I was a child, folks have had me pegged because of how the way I talk, and they are always wrong.” Put in context of the scene in which is uttered though, this is a faux pas because he happens to be talking to the friend of the murdered teenage girl when he says it and the subject of the conversation was the murdered teenage girl. It simply was not the time to start talking about himself. The friend and Harper Lee look uncomfortable but politely refrain from commenting on his behavior.

There is a lot of disturbing subtext in this movie that I did not quite catch the first time around. There is far more nuance in the performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman then I remember. It really is a great performance. First, it is so against type for Phillip Seymour Hoffman who had made his name before and after playing either far looser or far more authoritative characters. If this was the only movie you had seen of this actor, you would have a dramatically wrong idea of his normal range. Second, the way he plays Truman fits into the ambiguous way the movie itself shows his actions. The movie is directed by Bennett Miller who appears to take stances on Capote’s behavior in dribs and drabs, never really playing his hand as to whether he is sympathetic to him or not. It isn’t all that clear whether or not Capote should be helping the criminals. Or whether or not he is helping the criminals sincerely or to just help the dramatic unfolding of his book. Did he fall in love with Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), or simply identify with him as someone from a similar background, or is he simply using him. He is never directly confronted about his motivations. Ultimately, the men are scheduled for execution and the end (their lives, his book) is finally in sight. There is this extraordinary scene where Truman Capote visits the men immediately before they are hanged and experiences a very tightly wound emotional breakdown. The situation at that point is so complicated that it is impossible to unwind all of the contradictory elements of it. And yet it is emotionally real. All explanations can be found in the choices of the actor. Phillip Seymour Hoffman would go on to win the Oscar for this movie, and as I recall, it wasn’t really a contest. This is arguably the best performance of Hoffman who was arguably the best actor of his time (say 1995-2015). I still miss him.

The Director Bennett Miller is himself a bit of a cypher. Capote was his first feature film and he would go on to direct two others, 2011’s Moneyball and 2014’s Foxcatcher. Then apparently he decided he didn’t want to make movies anymore. It is rare that a person makes three feature films, all of which garner multiple Oscar nominations, and then doesn’t work again. His style doesn’t draw attention to the man behind the camera, instead it focuses on the acting which is allowed to breathe and develop. His movies are notable in that they feature some of the best acting in the careers of the actors in them, Hoffman in Capote, Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt in Moneyball, and Steve Carell and Channing Tatum in Foxcatcher.

When I first saw this movie in 2005, I didn’t quite get the scene near the mid-part of the movie where Alvin Dewey sits across from Truman and takes an understated midwestern umbrage to Truman’s efforts to help the criminals appeal their sentence on the grounds of inadequate counsel. If these men are freed because of his meddling, the Dewey informs Capote, “I’m going to go to Brooklyn and hunt you down.” I think I get it now. 

The utility of the death penalty does not lie in deterrence. Counterintuitively, people do not fear death. Instead they fear suffering. (This is what was learned by the many policy attempts to stop people from smoking. By far, it was more effective to show an alive person dealing with a hole in their throat than showing statistics about deaths from lung cancer.) And suffering, at least the cruel and unusual kind, is unconstitutional. No, the utility of the death penalty lies in its finality. It allows the community to move on and assuages the very natural impulse of human beings towards retribution and revenge. The state takes on that responsibility so the individual does not have to. Here we see Truman Capote suffer because it takes years for the two men's appeals to be exhausted before their execution. Imagine for a moment, how that same stay of execution affected the people who knew the murdered family and mourned their deaths. For that reason, it should remain, but used sparingly only for the commission of shocking crimes and only if there is no doubt at all as to guilt of the perpetrators.

Unfortunately this is not how the death penalty is used. Instead, it is used as leverage for negotiation (i.e. a criminal will escape the penalty if they plead guilty) making its general application only in those cases where the facts are hotly contested (i.e. the suspects plead innocent) and which require a trial. I say, if you need a trial to figure out what happened and who was responsible, then you shouldn’t apply the death penalty regardless of the outcome. And if there is no doubt that these two particular men decided to break into a house and murder a family of four for no particular reason, then they shouldn’t be allowed to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. Any argument that we shouldn’t have a death penalty because we are too civilized for it seems to me to be an argument from vanity which doesn’t take into account the details of the crime in question nor its effects on the larger community. But I digress. This movie isn’t about the victims.

Here is link to my original review:

https://maxsminimoviemagazine.blogspot.com/2010/10/capote-112005.html

The Fantastic Four: First Steps (3/5 Stars)

“A single death is a Tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

– Joseph Stalin

I must have missed something. I watched the entirety of Marvel’s The Infinity Saga. I didn’t see all the movies when they came out, but I eventually caught up before watching Endgame. I watched all but one movie from Phase Four (missed The Eternals which looked less like a movie than a presumptuous comic book approach to theology) and saw only Deadpool & Wolverine and Captain America: Civil War from Phase Five.

After watching WandaVision and Loki: Season 1, I chose not to spend any more of my time on the multitude of TV series. I never quite got the point of those TV series. If the character was popular, they would get a two-hour movie. So why are the more obscure characters getting two-to-three times as much screen time in a TV series? Who asked for six hours of Hawkeye?

And something must have occurred in those many hours of obscure television because The Fantastic Four: First Steps appears to take place in an alternate dimension. Now, I know about the whole multiverse thing, but I figured the Marvel movies would remain essentially in that one Infinity Saga universe. After all, that is the universe which supposedly aligns with our own existence.

(I for one think it was a grave mistake to ever give the impression that the events of the Infinity Saga were of so little importance in the greater scheme of things. Marvel essentially threw a decade’s worth of narrative development onto the trashheap for the service of a throw-away joke in Loki Season 1. Infinity stones as paperweights? Really?)

But we are told at the beginning of this movie that this is Earth 848. We aren't told the year, but it looks like a different version of the early 1960s. It must be because had the events that take place in this movie occurred before Iron Man (2008), we would have heard about it in Phases 1-3. So, this must be an alternate dimension. I have no idea why this is Earth 848 as opposed to Earth 2 when Marvel only has the capacity to tell us stories from a few of these dimensions and the audience's ability to care about what happens in any single universe decreases inverse proportion to how many universes there are in total. See Stalin’s epigram above.

Still, one can intuit the reason for the reboot. My best guess is that the original comics took place in the 1960s and likely had a distinctive style to them. Is this style worth starting a whole new universe for? Yes, I would think so. The best thing about this movie is the production value. The look melds 1950s-1960s modernism with anachronistic superhero technologies, sort of like a real-life Jetsons episode but much better. The Fantastic Four are a quartet of astronauts (think Apollo missions) that were exposed to cosmic rays in space and gained superpowers. Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal) can stretch his body and write math equations on chalkboards. Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) can turn invisible and create a magic force-field thing. Those two seemingly separate powers appear to be connected though I am not sure how. The Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) can light himself on fire and fly. The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is made of rocks.

I don’t know anything about this particular quartet of superheroes. I never read the comics (I’ve only read a handful of X-Men comic books. It's not my thing) and I haven't seen the movies from twenty years ago. I’ve heard they are like a superhero family, meaning that they live together and complain about each other’s cooking. Mr. Fantastic and Sue Storm are husband and wife and, as of the beginning of the movie, are expecting a child. The Human Torch is Sue Storm’s brother. The Thing is made of rocks.

This quartet appears to be very famous and wildly popular, so much so it would seem they have replaced the government. I believe their giant mansion/tower exists on the east side of Midtown-Manhattan where the United Nations building is supposed to be. During the exposition, we learn that Sue Storm negotiated a treaty with a foreign power named Subterranea, which is led by Mole Man (played by Paul Walter Hauser). Putting aside the strange resemblance of MoleMan with that of the Underminer in the Pixar Incredibles franchise, why is a superhero negotiating treaties with foreign powers at all unless the Fantastic Four are essentially the representatives of the people. Is this quartet the government? How does that work? And if they are, how are they so popular? Isn’t it natural for at least half the population to hate whoever happens to be in charge.

I think the movie takes for granted that I know something about these comics when I don’t. The plot develops when a silver woman on a silver surfboard flies down from outer space to announce that the Earth has been chosen for destruction by the hand of Galactus. First, what’s with the surfboard? Second, if you were going to destroy a planet, why would you announce your intentions? The importance of those questions are not necessarily in that order.

The Fantastic Four head to Galactus to try to negotiate the non-destruction of the planet. To do this, they utilize faster-than-light-speed travel through a wormhole, which apparently is so commonplace in this alternate dimension that no-one bothers to explain how it works or how it was invented. The quartet reach Galactus just in time to see it devour a helpless planet, for fun I think. Galactus, a giant robot looking ancient super-god thing, scans the contents of the spaceship (magically, I think) and draws the quartet’s spaceship into his alien lava lair with a tractor beam (or whatever) whereupon he offers an ultimatum. From the information gleaned from his magic eye-beam, Galactus comes to the conclusion that Sue Storm’s unborn child has god-like superpowers. He is willing to trade The World for the child straight up. Give him the child and he won’t destroy The World, he says.

This proffer is not seriously considered by the quartet. Their dismissive attitude towards The World reminded me of a previous movie, also starring Vanessa Kirby, called Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw, where a similar tradeoff was proffered: one person for The World, which was also dismissed out of hand. This seems to be a Hollywood thing. You see, movies are about headliners. It is the fate of movie stars that drive the plot and set the budget. The World is just a bunch of nameless extras. See Stalin’s epigram above.

When The World finds out that the quartet haven’t chosen the easy and obvious solution, their reaction is distinctly tepid. They seem more disappointed than angry. And when Sue Storm meets a perturbed but otherwise well-behaved crowd outside her fantastic mansion/tower, she explains that the quartet and The World will meet this challenge as a family. An odd choice of words given that The World is in danger because Sue wouldn’t sacrifice a member of her actual family to save The World. And here she is asking The World to potentially die for her son in the name of family. You’d think she would have the good taste to not insult The World’s intelligence by so blatantly invoking a double-standard.

Is there an alternative? After all, we just saw Galactus eat a planet. It is a thing he can definitely do. Mr. Fantastic comes up with a solution. Earlier in the movie, he utilized his superpower of writing math on chalkboards to conduct an experiment. He successfully teleported an egg ten feet across the room. Having proven to himself that teleportation is scientifically possible, he proposes to avoid Galactus by TELEPORTING THE WORLD TO AN ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT GALAXY.

Yes, you heard that right. Now, I know what you are saying. Hey, this is a comic-book superhero story that takes place in an alternate dimension. Chalkboards full of math have enabled faster-than-light travel. The Human Torch can fly. The Thing is made of rocks. Sure, you can teleport The World to a different galaxy using technology that enabled the teleportation of an egg ten feet.

No. No. No. No. No. No. That is stupid. That is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard proposed in any movie, and definitely the stupidest thing I have heard proposed in a Marvel movie (Remember, I didn’t see The Eternals). That is stupid. I cannot suspend my disbelief that far. I won't do it.

Movies have always been fantastical, but there is such a thing as diminishing returns as it concerns impossible things. You want to introduce something that shouldn’t be possible, say a giant robot named Galactus with a spaceship big enough to eat a planet, then this thing needs to at least follow its own rules. So, it matters just how large Galactus and his world destroying spaceship is. Is he as big as the Earth, or is he much smaller but still large enough to cast a shadow over the length of Manhattan, or is he much smaller than that and able to walk down Broadway between the skyscrapers a la Godzilla. Pick one and stick with it. Every time the movie changes its mind, it breaches that movie-audience understanding of the suspension of disbelief.

It is strange to such large problems with internal logic in a movie that looks this good, is basically well-acted, and is generally witty. Marvel is usually better than this. Without spoiling anything, since you know there is going to be a sequel, Galactus does not end up destroying The World. And he isn’t defeated either. (Actually, how they get rid of him, makes so much more sense, takes so much less effort, and has so much less chance for catastrophic failure than the original plan, you wonder how they could not have considered it in the first place.) So Galactus is going to be back, maybe.

The Infinity Saga was an incredibly wise plan for narrative development. It was rare for any particular solo movie to involve plots that endangered the planet. Such stakes are exhausting, unnecessary, and hard to take seriously if they happen in every movie. You build towards those types of stakes and when you are ready, call it an Avengers movie. The Fantastic Four: First Steps would have been a better movie had Marvel heeded its own example and started small.