iNFaMouS (2006) : aFTER THouGHTS

“I never dreamed that “Infamous (2006)” would hit me like a bullet.”

This Oscar-winnning film written and directed by one of the best directors in Hollywood, Douglas McGrath, and with the exceptional performances of Toby Jones, Sandra Bullock, Daniel Craig, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sigourney Weaver, Jeff Daniels, Isabella Rossellini, Hope Davis and the rest of the actors that made the movie worth watching.

I thought this movie will be something of a narrative report (like what the other biography movies were doing) but it never dawned on me that Toby Jones (playing the role of Truman Capote) could deliver the character as if he was truly Truman in the flesh.

This man is just truly amazing and fascinating because he was able to deliver the story in a different way.   As if I was inside Truman’s soul…. how he was trying to fight for his right as a gay person and at the same time show a different and newer side of him ( like I couldn’t imagine him being inside the prison and talking to a convicted fellow at the high time where most people , especially men,  where homophobic).

Sandra Bullock  as Nelle Harper Lee, who played as a novelist, was totally of a different  level in terms of character from Truman but she was able to stand by him again and again. ( I wish I had a friend like that — umm, yeah, I do have).

Then there was Daniel Craig who portrayed Perry Smith, a deluded monster, who was a convicted felon at Kansas whom Truman was obsessed with at some point.

Although the movie was not at mostly sophisticated than the first Capote film, but in the sense it brought out the a different point of view on how Truman should be seen… not as a gay and overly exaggerated fool but someone who has the heart, hard at many times, but still was able to show to the world that he is truly Truman, no more and no less.

(below are favorite lines from Truman. These are the after thoughts I have followed while watching the movie…. 🙂

“The only way to rise above bulgarity is to rise above it.”

” When you are tiny you have to be tough.   This world isn’t kind to little things.”

“The most important point in life is awareness. Everything is self. Self is everything. That is awareness.”

” A small view, a small angle, a small consciousness cannot see anything.   The bigger your opponent is, then more of the smaller things will not be able to understand that difference in size.  therefore, simply distance yourself.   Once you distanced yourself, you will realize that the big things are merely part of something even bigger.”

“I always believed that whenever you do something right, it gives you a little bit of weight… so that you come to feel rooted to the earth, you know?  Solid, secure.   Now what scares me is… well,  sometimes out of nowhere… a bad wind blows up.    Now it could be cancer, could be drink, could be some woman that don’t belong to you… and despite the ground…  when that wind comes,  it picks you up light as a leaf… and it takes you wherever it wants.   We are in control until we’re not.   Then we are helpless.”

P.S.    The late Truman Capote’s best achievement yet “In Cold Blood”, a masterpiece of true storytelling about the horrific murder of a mid-western family by a pair of intruders from hell.