If you follow the movies at all, you’ve heard some of the buzz surrounding Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance in “Capote.” A sure lock for an Oscar nomination, Hoffman doesn’t so much play writer Truman Capote as inhabit him.

But “Capote” is much more than just a showcase for a marvelous actor. It is a richly realized film that uses the pivotal period in Capote’s life to tell a cautionary tale about reporting, artistry and finding answers and truths that might just as well have been left hidden.

Adroitly written by Dan Futterman, “Capote” isn’t a conventional biopic that spans the author’s life. Instead, it is narrowly focused on a six-year period — from 1959, when Capote read about the murders of the Clutter family in the little town of Holcomb, Kan., to 1965, when he finished “In Cold Blood,” his groundbreaking non-fiction novel about those killings.

Already a celebrity via “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Capote was a coddled outsider in New York’s literary society, popular because of his success and his affectations. But in rural Kansas, Capote’s high voice, mannered speech, name dropping and obvious homosexuality made him a freak.

So he brought with him an old friend, another writer named Nelle Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), who was soon to have her own literary success with “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Lee served as his research assistant, getting into places Capote never could.

But his celebrity got him the entree he needed, winning over the wife of Allen Dewey (Chris Cooper), the flinty Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent in charge of the case.

His real breakthrough came when Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), one of those arrested for the murders of the Clutter family, was housed in the county’s woman’s cell. That cell just happened to be in the kitchen of the sheriff’s residence, and Capote had already befriended the sheriff’s wife.

Drawn to Smith, who appears to be a sensitive sort, Capote befriended him and his partner, Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino). He knew immediately that he had come across the story of a lifetime and that he would write it as a book that could be a literary milestone.

But what Capote didn’t immediately recognize and what the movie  shows is that Truman signed a deal with the devil in becoming infatuated with Smith, a deal that would tear at his relationship with his lover, Jack Dunphy (Bruce Greenwood), and eventually consume his life in ways that he could not have anticipated and no one would have wanted.

Hoffman portrays that traumatic slide with the same acuity he brings to the life-of-the-party Truman, delivering a performance so sympathetic that you feel sorry for the real-life Capote, who degenerated into drunken self-parody before his 1984 death.

Because it is about Capote’s relationships and psychological trauma, the film had to be very deliberate, and director Bennett Miller had the courage and patience to let it play out slowly. He also sets the perfect tone throughout, making great use of Michael Danna’s muted score to quickly set a mood and of Adam Kimmel’s photography to establish both place and feeling.

But what really carries “Capote” is Futterman’s brilliant script. Based on the biography by Gerald Clarke, the screenplay lifts some passages from real life and makes everything else seem authentic. If Hoffman gets his Oscar nomination, Futterman should get one, too. They are the keys to the film.

Unlike most biographic films that are about the subject and the subject only, “Capote” raises issues that go beyond the story it tells — issues of the relationships between writers and their subjects and the responsibilities of both parties, questions about the risks and rewards of creativity and, ultimately, the purposes to which talents are brought to bear.

Capote came to regret that he ever ventured to Kansas even though “In Cold Blood” turned out to be an enduring masterwork that changed the nature of non-fiction writing. In directly showing how and why that happened, “Capote” is one of the best pictures of 2005.

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.

Capote

(4 stars)

Director: Bennett Miller

Stars: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper, Clifton Collins

Rated: R for some violent images and brief strong language.

Now Showing: Ross

The Reel Story: Hoffman delivers the performance of the year playing writer Truman Capote as he goes to Kansas to write his masterpiece, “In Cold Blood.”