A sombre, but beautifully complementary, pair of films.
In Cold Blood is the 1967 dramatisation of Capote's book. Harrowing in that noirish way that monochrome often is. Richard Brooks was Oscar-nominated for his direction and screenplay.
I don't know what it is about the Clutter murders that continues to fascinate. This sort of senseless crime had happened before, and continues to happen now. But Capote the writer instantly recognised something else, and we do too. It was the anonymity of the Clutters, their ordinariness and conservatism, their blameless Kansas existence. You get the feeling that if they aren't safe, then none of us are.
The film goes to great lengths to be authentic. The actual house is used in the film, as are the gas station, the cafe and the hardware store where Perry Smith and Hickock bought the rope and tape used in the crime.
Most of the film, as with the book, deals with the characters of the murderers, and seeks explanations that probably don't truly exist. The Clutters deserve most of our sympathy, but at the risk of dragging out an old cliché, you end up feeling that the killers were just victims of another kind.
Capote looks at the same story from a different angle. The author has a vicarious presence -- the personification of our own fascination. It would be tempting to envy him, though you sense that it affected and disturbed him in ways that we don't much fancy. Sublime acting from Philip Seymour Hoffman -- a worthy Oscar winner. Brilliant direction too, that manages to convey the bleakness of the story, from which no one really emerges with much glory, apart from Chris Cooper's Alvin Dewey, the chief investigating officer.
It doesn't add up to a fun-packed evening, but if you can watch both of these films in the same session (starting with the older film), it's well worth it.
Don't be tempted to play your Leonard Cohen records straight afterwards though.
Links --
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061809/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379725/
