Feud: Capote vs The Swans
May. 15th, 2024 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which a great cast and an award-heavy scriptwriter still don‘t manage to produce something that holds together as a miniseries, leaving me to conclude it ought to have been a movie instead, or a theatre play.
Given that I had enjoyed the first „Feud“ miniseries - about Joan Crawford and Bette Davies, played by Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon respectively -, have been deeply impressed by Capote starring Philipp Seymour Hoffman and at least intrigued by Infamous (same subject, starring Toby Jones as Truman C.), I was definitely the target audience for this one. Mind you, all these comparisons also are illulminating as to why all the collective talent couldn‘t makeCapote versus the Swans work in the same way.
First of all, there‘s the choice of subject and premise, and the difference to those earlier efforts. Both Capote and Infamous deal with the writing of In Cold Blood, that most critically admired forerunner of True Crime books, with the ethical dilemmas therein. The dramatic contrast between Capote on the one hand and Perry Smith, one of the two killers, on the other, along with the eerie parallels Capote himself noticed and exploited in order to get his story (re: their mothers and their relationships with them) makes for a good lead character constellation. In terms of supporting characters, both films have Capote‘s childhood friend Harper Lee as the voice of common sense and again, a good contrast to both leads. And because In Cold Blood really is that good a book, and because what Capote does isn’t as easily to pin down as wrong as murder or theft or rape would be, the question as to how far you go when writing/creating isn‘t an easily answerable and interesting one.
Feud: Bette and Joan also has its dramatic character constellation set up. Both actresses, when the miniseries starts, are past their respective pinnacles of stardom and fame, but not abilities. They‘re different products of the craft - it‘s often been said Crawford was the ultimate glamorous movie star in her day while Davies was the ultimate fearless character actress - which doesn‘t mean Crawford couldn‘t act, or that Davies didn‘t enjoy glamour now and then; and their personalities have just enough stark differences and eerie similarities to make the clashes and temporary alliances fascinating. Then there are the twists and turns against the cliché about each actress - for example, it‘s Joan Crawford who at the start reaches out (despite Davies‘ open contempt), finds a good project for both of them, the script and the director. And the shades of grey throughout - the miniseries makes it clear just how much the patriarchy is against them (and relying on them being enemies, deliberately playing them against each other) and how much they‘re partly complicit in the system. The supporting cast is great and diverse. There are basically three mini arcs within the series - „Whatever happened to Baby Jane?“ and the fallout, Crawford losing her place in the followup, „Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte“, and the fallout from this for both, and her decline and fall (towards the end, but only towards the end, the miniseries is more about Joan than about Bette because her death provides a good stopping point and Davies outlived her by many years). There is narrative drive throughout.
Meanwhile, Capote versus the Swans deals with Capote, post Cold Blood already an alcoholic but fame wise on top of the world, publishing an excerpt from his never completed novel Answered Prayers which very obviously portrayed various of the high society ladies he was intimate friends with and had nicknamed „the Swans“, thereby essentially committing social suicide, as the understandably hurt women cut him out of their lives. Truman then spends the next decade drinking himself to death. The problems with the basic narrative set up compared to the earlier ones are manigfold. You can‘t really ask „would the novel have artistically justified the emotional betrayal?“ because the novel doesn‘t exist except in fragments. The justaposition between Truman Capote on the one hand and the Swans on the other - or to be more specific, mostly Babe Palley (Naomi Watts) and Slim (Diane Lane), with supporting acts from C.Z. (Chloe Sevigny) and Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart) doesn‘t make for a suspenseful character constellation, because unlike Crawford and Davies, who act not just in the performing sense throughout their miniseries, who are protagonists whose actions drive the narrative, here everyone is most reacting after the initial episode in which Truman publishes his excerpt and the ladies cut him off is past. He‘s unable to complete another book. But they are not creating anything, and they don‘t really have a story of their own they drive forward. Babe comes closest, and her story is that she gets cancer and dies after having struggled with whether or not to forgive. Slim is the most active in the early episodes since she really wants to punish Truman and doesn‘t just leave it at closing ranks in shutting him out but launches active anti Capote gossip columns through journalistic acquaintances, but that, too, passes. And Truman while making some efforts in between to get a hold on himself, usually when one of his few remaining friends gives him a pep talk, just self destructs. Over eight episodes. This is just not good drama as a series. (Like I said, it would work as a movie, shortened to two hours, though even then it would still have the problem of the Swans collectively not being good as contrasts/parallels.)
Now, this doesn‘t mean the series didn‘t have its compelling elements, otherwise I wouldn‘t write about it. Because there‘s no narrative momentum, it goes in deep with the character analysis, and the acting is, as mentioned, very good. The only criticism I‘d give to Tom Hollander‘s performance as Truman Capote isn‘t really one because he does play Capote in self destruct mode - i.e. you don‘t see the strength that enabled this man to live as out as you could possibly be in the US of the 40s and 50s. But he‘s good, and since the series suggests a variety of motives for Capote, not least because it doesn‘t tell its story in a linear way all the time but circles back a few times, he needs to be. As for the ladies, each one enjoys their stylish personae and sparkles, though as mentioned, the only ones who get something like in depth narrative attention are Babe and Slim, and of the two, Babe is the only one getting something of an emotional arc from anger to acceptance to forgiveness - and that‘s in reacting, not doing. (I.e. the script lets her signal forgiveness to Truman during an accidental encounter on the street, but it doesn‘t have consequences because it‘s invented - he‘s still an outcast afterwards, and she dies. I.e. it‘s the kind of thing bio pics love to do if the central characters had an argument they never really patched up: invent a last meeting no one knows about.) Perhaps one way to give the series more drive would have been to focus on another of the Swans? Slim is the only active one in her revenge and that‘s only early on, until she‘s called out by Lee on going after Truman not so much to avenge Babe and the dead Ann but because she feels guilty herself for her affair with Babe‘s husband.
Someone among the supporting cast who does get development is Truman‘s long suffering life partner Jack who after various ups and downs and attempts to save Truman from himself finally calls it quits after Truman basically makes a thinly disguised suicide attempt on national tv; he saves him physically one last time and then leaves for good and moves on with another man. Harper Lee is Ms Not Appearing In This Miniseries (or even getting mentioned), which is fair since she and Truman were starting to get estranged in the aftermath of In Cold Blood (which for my money is the more tragic friendship breakup, because these two had been friends since their childhood in Alabama, and she‘d have been a more inherently dramatic foil than his society ladies, too, given she achieved her own writerly immortality just when he had peaked and started to fall), and so she wouldn‘t have been around for long. Other characters drift in and out without the audience getting to know what happened to them - James Baldwin shows up for exactly one episode (one of the non-linear appearing ones, and we never find out what happened to Kerry/Kate, Truman‘s young protegé, after she realises he‘s on the same self destructive path as her father -, but they are very memorable. And the series makes an attempt at a self confrontation and redemption story in the very last episode. Now, we‘ve already seen Truman die in the previous one, but the last one is all about why he never finished Answered Prayers and reveals that no, it‘s not because between all the alcohol and the hallucinations, he was no longer able to write, but that he did finish it and then realised that he‘d been kidding himself with the belief that writing happy endings for his Swans which give them what they secretly really wanted and didn‘t get (which results in a series of increasingly bizarre vignettes, with the Lee Radziwill one telling me that Jon Baitz, the scriptwriter, must really have it in for the late Herbert Ross) would make up for what he did and achieve their forgiveness but that the only thing which would genuinely show repentance was to not do this novel and have it published, to destroy it for good, even if that means his writerly reputation never recovers. Now, through the series Truman‘s late mother Nina, played by Jessica Lange, has made sinister ghostly cameos (clarification: this isn’t a supernatural series, it’s clear Truman is hallucinating) hinting that his conflicted feelings about his mother are at the core of his relationships with the Swans, but in the final episode we also the ghost of Ann Woodward (Demi Moore) joining her, the one woman whom Truman didn‘t just embarrass or hurt by the published excerpt but whom he drove into suicide with it, and it‘s Ann who is the the deliverer of „the book or your soul“ ultimatum.
Which brings me to another problem: as not much beyond the published chapter exists of Answered Prayers, Baitz had to invent and imagine these happy endings for the Swans, and he‘s a good and moving writer (I also liked his West Wing episode), but Truman Capote, he‘s not. Meaning: going by the excerpts we hear, Capote definitely makes the right choice in saving his soul and sacrificing his novel, and then it‘s not much of a sacrifice, is it? Similarly with the overall theme of Capote destroying himself and his talent; it lacks the weight it needs if we‘re never given an example of what that talent is beyond the occasional one liner. (Capote the movie did not make that mistake. Mid-film, just when we realise the central dilemma, Capote does a reading from the In Cold Blood manuscript, and we the audience get to hear a few lines of really awesome prose.)
One of the things this miniseries tackles and none of the other Capote-featuring fictions did (despite Infamous including Babe and Slim as characters in the heyday of their friendship with Truman) is analyzing, deconstructing and rebuilding the whole „gay best friend“ trope: the nature of the relationship(s) between female celebrities and the flamboyantly gay men they hang out with. Is Truman, as he at one point fears, a fashion accessoire like a poodle, or the true love of Babe‘s life (as she says, though not to him)? Is it the emotional intimacy without sexual demands that‘s the allure, or the idea that betrayal is impossible because it‘s not a romance, which gets viciously defied because betrayal does happen, and it cuts deeper than the romantic ones? Are the Swans friendlier, kinder versions of Nina, or do they symbolize what Nina wanted to be but never could which is why Truman „punishes“ them, as Nina‘s ghost suggests? I should add here that the first few times ghostly Nina shows up she‘s seemingly supportive of her son on the surface, though clearly embodying his worse, self destructive impulses, and it‘s not until the last episode when we get a genuine non-ghostly flashback to Truman‘s childhood and see what their relationship was like in reality, not in his head. (Sidenote: it was ghastly. As one Capote biographer observes, basically the only thing Nina could be given credit for was that her constant emotional abuse spared Truman a sexual identity crisis; given she already called him „fag“, „sissy“ and „fairy“ when he was five, he never wondered whether or not he was gay, he took it for granted that he was. If anything, the series is nicer to her than the biographies, as the flashbacks show Nina also providing some affection along with the verbal cruelty.)
In conclusion: there was enough interesting to me in this series to keep me watching till the end, but I really think it would have either worked better as a two hours theatre play or with a different premise.
Given that I had enjoyed the first „Feud“ miniseries - about Joan Crawford and Bette Davies, played by Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon respectively -, have been deeply impressed by Capote starring Philipp Seymour Hoffman and at least intrigued by Infamous (same subject, starring Toby Jones as Truman C.), I was definitely the target audience for this one. Mind you, all these comparisons also are illulminating as to why all the collective talent couldn‘t make
First of all, there‘s the choice of subject and premise, and the difference to those earlier efforts. Both Capote and Infamous deal with the writing of In Cold Blood, that most critically admired forerunner of True Crime books, with the ethical dilemmas therein. The dramatic contrast between Capote on the one hand and Perry Smith, one of the two killers, on the other, along with the eerie parallels Capote himself noticed and exploited in order to get his story (re: their mothers and their relationships with them) makes for a good lead character constellation. In terms of supporting characters, both films have Capote‘s childhood friend Harper Lee as the voice of common sense and again, a good contrast to both leads. And because In Cold Blood really is that good a book, and because what Capote does isn’t as easily to pin down as wrong as murder or theft or rape would be, the question as to how far you go when writing/creating isn‘t an easily answerable and interesting one.
Feud: Bette and Joan also has its dramatic character constellation set up. Both actresses, when the miniseries starts, are past their respective pinnacles of stardom and fame, but not abilities. They‘re different products of the craft - it‘s often been said Crawford was the ultimate glamorous movie star in her day while Davies was the ultimate fearless character actress - which doesn‘t mean Crawford couldn‘t act, or that Davies didn‘t enjoy glamour now and then; and their personalities have just enough stark differences and eerie similarities to make the clashes and temporary alliances fascinating. Then there are the twists and turns against the cliché about each actress - for example, it‘s Joan Crawford who at the start reaches out (despite Davies‘ open contempt), finds a good project for both of them, the script and the director. And the shades of grey throughout - the miniseries makes it clear just how much the patriarchy is against them (and relying on them being enemies, deliberately playing them against each other) and how much they‘re partly complicit in the system. The supporting cast is great and diverse. There are basically three mini arcs within the series - „Whatever happened to Baby Jane?“ and the fallout, Crawford losing her place in the followup, „Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte“, and the fallout from this for both, and her decline and fall (towards the end, but only towards the end, the miniseries is more about Joan than about Bette because her death provides a good stopping point and Davies outlived her by many years). There is narrative drive throughout.
Meanwhile, Capote versus the Swans deals with Capote, post Cold Blood already an alcoholic but fame wise on top of the world, publishing an excerpt from his never completed novel Answered Prayers which very obviously portrayed various of the high society ladies he was intimate friends with and had nicknamed „the Swans“, thereby essentially committing social suicide, as the understandably hurt women cut him out of their lives. Truman then spends the next decade drinking himself to death. The problems with the basic narrative set up compared to the earlier ones are manigfold. You can‘t really ask „would the novel have artistically justified the emotional betrayal?“ because the novel doesn‘t exist except in fragments. The justaposition between Truman Capote on the one hand and the Swans on the other - or to be more specific, mostly Babe Palley (Naomi Watts) and Slim (Diane Lane), with supporting acts from C.Z. (Chloe Sevigny) and Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart) doesn‘t make for a suspenseful character constellation, because unlike Crawford and Davies, who act not just in the performing sense throughout their miniseries, who are protagonists whose actions drive the narrative, here everyone is most reacting after the initial episode in which Truman publishes his excerpt and the ladies cut him off is past. He‘s unable to complete another book. But they are not creating anything, and they don‘t really have a story of their own they drive forward. Babe comes closest, and her story is that she gets cancer and dies after having struggled with whether or not to forgive. Slim is the most active in the early episodes since she really wants to punish Truman and doesn‘t just leave it at closing ranks in shutting him out but launches active anti Capote gossip columns through journalistic acquaintances, but that, too, passes. And Truman while making some efforts in between to get a hold on himself, usually when one of his few remaining friends gives him a pep talk, just self destructs. Over eight episodes. This is just not good drama as a series. (Like I said, it would work as a movie, shortened to two hours, though even then it would still have the problem of the Swans collectively not being good as contrasts/parallels.)
Now, this doesn‘t mean the series didn‘t have its compelling elements, otherwise I wouldn‘t write about it. Because there‘s no narrative momentum, it goes in deep with the character analysis, and the acting is, as mentioned, very good. The only criticism I‘d give to Tom Hollander‘s performance as Truman Capote isn‘t really one because he does play Capote in self destruct mode - i.e. you don‘t see the strength that enabled this man to live as out as you could possibly be in the US of the 40s and 50s. But he‘s good, and since the series suggests a variety of motives for Capote, not least because it doesn‘t tell its story in a linear way all the time but circles back a few times, he needs to be. As for the ladies, each one enjoys their stylish personae and sparkles, though as mentioned, the only ones who get something like in depth narrative attention are Babe and Slim, and of the two, Babe is the only one getting something of an emotional arc from anger to acceptance to forgiveness - and that‘s in reacting, not doing. (I.e. the script lets her signal forgiveness to Truman during an accidental encounter on the street, but it doesn‘t have consequences because it‘s invented - he‘s still an outcast afterwards, and she dies. I.e. it‘s the kind of thing bio pics love to do if the central characters had an argument they never really patched up: invent a last meeting no one knows about.) Perhaps one way to give the series more drive would have been to focus on another of the Swans? Slim is the only active one in her revenge and that‘s only early on, until she‘s called out by Lee on going after Truman not so much to avenge Babe and the dead Ann but because she feels guilty herself for her affair with Babe‘s husband.
Someone among the supporting cast who does get development is Truman‘s long suffering life partner Jack who after various ups and downs and attempts to save Truman from himself finally calls it quits after Truman basically makes a thinly disguised suicide attempt on national tv; he saves him physically one last time and then leaves for good and moves on with another man. Harper Lee is Ms Not Appearing In This Miniseries (or even getting mentioned), which is fair since she and Truman were starting to get estranged in the aftermath of In Cold Blood (which for my money is the more tragic friendship breakup, because these two had been friends since their childhood in Alabama, and she‘d have been a more inherently dramatic foil than his society ladies, too, given she achieved her own writerly immortality just when he had peaked and started to fall), and so she wouldn‘t have been around for long. Other characters drift in and out without the audience getting to know what happened to them - James Baldwin shows up for exactly one episode (one of the non-linear appearing ones, and we never find out what happened to Kerry/Kate, Truman‘s young protegé, after she realises he‘s on the same self destructive path as her father -, but they are very memorable. And the series makes an attempt at a self confrontation and redemption story in the very last episode. Now, we‘ve already seen Truman die in the previous one, but the last one is all about why he never finished Answered Prayers and reveals that no, it‘s not because between all the alcohol and the hallucinations, he was no longer able to write, but that he did finish it and then realised that he‘d been kidding himself with the belief that writing happy endings for his Swans which give them what they secretly really wanted and didn‘t get (which results in a series of increasingly bizarre vignettes, with the Lee Radziwill one telling me that Jon Baitz, the scriptwriter, must really have it in for the late Herbert Ross) would make up for what he did and achieve their forgiveness but that the only thing which would genuinely show repentance was to not do this novel and have it published, to destroy it for good, even if that means his writerly reputation never recovers. Now, through the series Truman‘s late mother Nina, played by Jessica Lange, has made sinister ghostly cameos (clarification: this isn’t a supernatural series, it’s clear Truman is hallucinating) hinting that his conflicted feelings about his mother are at the core of his relationships with the Swans, but in the final episode we also the ghost of Ann Woodward (Demi Moore) joining her, the one woman whom Truman didn‘t just embarrass or hurt by the published excerpt but whom he drove into suicide with it, and it‘s Ann who is the the deliverer of „the book or your soul“ ultimatum.
Which brings me to another problem: as not much beyond the published chapter exists of Answered Prayers, Baitz had to invent and imagine these happy endings for the Swans, and he‘s a good and moving writer (I also liked his West Wing episode), but Truman Capote, he‘s not. Meaning: going by the excerpts we hear, Capote definitely makes the right choice in saving his soul and sacrificing his novel, and then it‘s not much of a sacrifice, is it? Similarly with the overall theme of Capote destroying himself and his talent; it lacks the weight it needs if we‘re never given an example of what that talent is beyond the occasional one liner. (Capote the movie did not make that mistake. Mid-film, just when we realise the central dilemma, Capote does a reading from the In Cold Blood manuscript, and we the audience get to hear a few lines of really awesome prose.)
One of the things this miniseries tackles and none of the other Capote-featuring fictions did (despite Infamous including Babe and Slim as characters in the heyday of their friendship with Truman) is analyzing, deconstructing and rebuilding the whole „gay best friend“ trope: the nature of the relationship(s) between female celebrities and the flamboyantly gay men they hang out with. Is Truman, as he at one point fears, a fashion accessoire like a poodle, or the true love of Babe‘s life (as she says, though not to him)? Is it the emotional intimacy without sexual demands that‘s the allure, or the idea that betrayal is impossible because it‘s not a romance, which gets viciously defied because betrayal does happen, and it cuts deeper than the romantic ones? Are the Swans friendlier, kinder versions of Nina, or do they symbolize what Nina wanted to be but never could which is why Truman „punishes“ them, as Nina‘s ghost suggests? I should add here that the first few times ghostly Nina shows up she‘s seemingly supportive of her son on the surface, though clearly embodying his worse, self destructive impulses, and it‘s not until the last episode when we get a genuine non-ghostly flashback to Truman‘s childhood and see what their relationship was like in reality, not in his head. (Sidenote: it was ghastly. As one Capote biographer observes, basically the only thing Nina could be given credit for was that her constant emotional abuse spared Truman a sexual identity crisis; given she already called him „fag“, „sissy“ and „fairy“ when he was five, he never wondered whether or not he was gay, he took it for granted that he was. If anything, the series is nicer to her than the biographies, as the flashbacks show Nina also providing some affection along with the verbal cruelty.)
In conclusion: there was enough interesting to me in this series to keep me watching till the end, but I really think it would have either worked better as a two hours theatre play or with a different premise.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-15 08:12 pm (UTC)