Last year Jamie Foxx won an Oscar, and every other award on the planet, for his pitch perfect interpretation of Ray Charles, a man so famous, with such a unique voice and countenance, that anything short of exact imitation would have rung hollow.  Movies about real, famous people are only as good as the actor in the lead, playing said famous person, quite simply, like all fictional recreations of actual events, because the real deal is so familiar, so easily called upon in our collective memory of the not-so-ancient history, that a bogus colorization of that recognizable persona for the big screen just wouldn’t cut it in comparison. Down the line of film history, and for the remainder of film history to come, however long that may be, actors will be called upon to recreate known legends, it’s a simple fact, one born out of a need to explore history, legend, and the ancient art of adaptation over original fiction – which admittedly is a whole other ballgame when analyzing whether or not a lead performance can make or break a picture – and often the combination of a seamless impersonation and a likeable, well developed story can lead to prize worthy results.  Foxx made “Ray”, no doubt, but Charles’ music, and Taylor Hackford’s faithful direction shaped it into a Best Picture nominee, while three years ago, Michael Cunningham’s three-era triptych “The Hours” was more notable for it’s ensemble of brilliant female characters, and their story similarities to each other, than simply for Nicole Kidman’s emulsion into Virginia Woolf, which too nabbed her a lead Oscar, possibly for the uncanny transformation, rather than depth of performance or emotional connection with the audience.  Sometimes the movie outlives the performance, like Sam Wood’s “The Pride of the Yankees”, which features a fine Gary Cooper performance as Lou Gherig, but is basically Coop being Coop in a Yankees uniform, with little interpretation involved, yet with a story like Gherig’s, and a doozy of a farewell monologue, the film is now a classic of the Golden Age, when fictionalizations were yet to meet method acting, and an actor of Cooper’s status could pull off a famous character without much, if any, of Gherig’s mannerisms.  There are countless examples in the medium where an already good story was made great by the personalization an actor brings to a well known figure – John Malkovich interpreting John Malkovich in “Being John Malkovich” is the screwball example, but for easier results just watch “Ray” again – and this year is no exception, so with Joaquin Phoenix’s Johnny Cash bio “Walk the Line” waiting in the wings mid-November, the focus right now is on, and rightfully so, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote in “Capote”, and David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow in “Good Night, and Good Luck”.

            Both films, “Capote”, directed by newcomer Bennett Miller, and “Good Night, and Good Luck”, co-written, co-starring, and directed by George Clooney in rich black and white, deal with very famous American legends, told numerous times over in books, news stories, and previous motion pictures, but are so stirring thanks to the two lead performances that the legendary stories seem fresher than ever, just in time to reap the benefits of awards season.  Clooney’s movie, about pioneering CBS journalist Murrow’s crusade in the early ‘50’s to publicly spotlight the hypocrisy and ridiculousness of Joseph McCarthy and the HUAC witch hunts, is the tougher interpretation to sell, since Murrow’s voice (a radio staple during WWII), as well as the broadcasts, are the stuff of ‘50’s nostalgic legend, and are thus more easily remembered, but Strathairn, with his cool, yet nervy performance, chain smoking the paranoia right out of his nationally televised headquarters, is Murrow incarnate, and his spot on reading of the various groundbreaking investigative pieces carries the relatively short film like a good anchor carrying a slow news day.  The film benefits greatly from a masterful use of archival stock footage of McCarthy, reminding the audience of what they might have forgotten from high school history class, that the Red Scare was little more than the dangerous obsession of an insecure American government paranoid about the word wide influence of communism, and the radical, no-name junior senator from Wisconsin who they let puppeteer the thing out of control, but Clooney is wise to never let the real footage outshine Strathairn’s Murrow interpretation, and for that “Good Night, and Good Luck” plays out like an attack on hypocrisy, a justification for personal freedom, and a triumph for gutsy journalism.  It rightfully aligns itself with past journalistic integrity pictures like “All the President’s Men” and “The Insider” as seriously composed and acted accounts of the little reporters who make history against larger than life opponents (Nixon, Big Tobacco, McCarthyism), but the difference is that the past films were conventionally told, where Clooney’s film is improvisational and gorgeous in it’s classical black and white shine, making Strathairn’s performance not only look vintage, but feel every bit like a modern day homage to a 1950’s legend, in shimmering chrome tones. 

            If Strathairn’s performance as Edward R. Murrow is classically straightforward, than Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as American novelist Truman Capote in “Capote”, during the investigative, troubling years he spent writing his masterpiece, “In Cold Blood”, is a thing of flamboyant brilliance, capturing the Southern gentility meets N.Y. socialite that was Truman Capote.  Capote had a famously strange voice, accentuated by his well-read speech and overly flamboyant mannerisms (his homosexuality, while important in the critical readings of his work, isn’t of controversial matter in the film), but he may not be as well-known to an audience as Murrow, and the story may be more familiar from Richard Brooks’ novel adaptation of “In Cold Blood”, with Robert Blake as the sensitive, misunderstood killer Perry Smith, with whom Capote grows a crippling, doomed friendship with, than from anything else, including the book itself, but well-known or not, Capote was as Hoffman portrays him, and his arch goes in a steady progression from curiosity, investigation, and fascination, to depression, alcoholism, and frustration as the execution of Smith and his accomplice nears, and the inevitable, heartbreaking ending to his four-years-in-the-making non-fiction novel finally writes itself.  Hoffman sinks into Capote in all the stages of the torturous four years, from hotshot literary socialite to alcoholic genius burdened with a conscience that wants an ending to his laborious work, but doesn’t want his friendship with Smith (who he uses, almost contemptuously, like a lover extracting a good story), to cease at the end of a hangman’s noose.  Capote’s dilemma is an ethical one; does he try to stay the execution by helping Smith get a new lawyer, thus preventing not only an ending to his novel, but justice to the family of Smith’s victims, or does he suffer the loss of Smith by selfishly ignoring his requests, at the behest of the novel that is bound to make him the most famous writer in America.  Miller’s beautifully sad film is a study in the shifting moods of the troubled writer, and how his moral dilemma drove him nearly insane, and certainly drove him to the bottle that would eventually end his life twenty years later.  It’s one of the best films of the year, but I doubt it would be as memorable if it weren’t for Hoffman’s uncanny performance, a prime example of how a truly gifted actor can psychologically, as well as physically, shape himself into a legendary persona, thus shaping his film into a believable account of an already documented subject.  Right now Strathairn may be the dark horse, and Hoffman, as it stands, with some help from the buzz machine, may be the front runner for Best Actor, but no matter who ends up with more accolades at the end of the year, both performances should be studied from here out not as impersonations, but as brilliant examples of real life turned art, by painstakingly detailed, horrifically nuanced and skilled acting interpretation.

            Both “Good Night, and Good Luck” and “Capote” are playing in various theaters in and around the greater Buffalo area.

by Adam Suraf

asuraf@DunkirkMA.net