During a most elegant dinner, of stratospheric elegance, Louisa Firth (Roya Shanks), a lady of the highest class, tells Truman Capote, the writer, at that time, in 1968, very famous and highly respected - the success of In
Blood cold
has not only filled her bank account with zeros, it has also turned him into a kind of object of social desire among the rich—that she could never trust a writer.
Amused, Capote (Tom Hollander in the kind of state of grace that has made him the best on-screen Capote ever) tells her that neither does he, but he wants to know why she wouldn't trust him.
Firth, without hesitation, says that because the narrators always have the last word, and they are not the ones who should have it, she believes she.
Who should have it? asks the writer.
“Anyone who lived through World War II will tell you that.
The person who has the most power.
United States, for example.
He has had the last word.
Two bombs and it's over,” he replies.
And he adds, subtly and brutally: “Kabum.”
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'Feud: Capote vs.
The Swans', 'Red Queen' and other series recommended for February 2024
That scene, located at the starting point of the long-awaited second installment of
Feud
(the first three episodes now available on HBO Max), the anthology series by the always brilliant and admirable Ryan Murphy — here accompanied by none other than Gus Van Sant and Jennifer Lynch, in the direction, and Jon Robin Baitz, in the script -, based on big fights between
celebrities
- the first installment told the confrontation between Bette Davies and Joan Crawford on the filming of
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane
?, a duel superb interpretive performance between Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange - perfectly sums up the kind of feast that awaits us as viewers.
That is to say, once upon a time there was an ugly—and repellently charming—duckling doomed to end up being
devoured
by his
sisters
, lavish swans, when they discover that he is not one of them, and never really has been.
They were just pretending, one and the other.
The writer, for the social advancement that this entailed;
them, for fun, and a
purchased
understanding.
Demi Moore as Anna Woodward, one of the 'friends' betrayed by the writer in 'Feud Capote vs the Swans' Photo provided by FX
This is headed
by
Babe Paley (a masterful Naomi Watts at the top of her game), the wife of Bill Paley, the owner of CBS, whom Capote's betrayal completely destroys, not so much because of what it does to her socially - says the last mess of her husband's skirts the tycoon, and plunges her into the misery of the meek
cuckold
wives -, as for what she loses with it: him.
Not to her husband, but to the writer, with whom she had a
feeling
, that of a best friend and at the same time a perfect man—fun, attentive, a little quite
bad
, as far as gossip was concerned—that she had never had. with nobody.
Babe, and the rest of the enviable ladies of the New York
jet set
of the time—the late sixties and early seventies—who had welcomed the writer like someone welcoming a court jester—he was the transmitter of stories. , and the stories are gossip, and from them,
they live
-, believing him to be mere entertainment, they do not hesitate to hammer him when they discover that he believed he had the right to have what Louisa Firth called "the last word."
Capote, let us remember, had become a successful author after publishing
In Cold Blood
, the first
non-fiction novel
in history, a work halfway between journalism and literature that reconstructed the virulent murder of a family, the Clutters. , at his home in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas.
His editor, Joseph M. Fox, trying to keep him, signed him a check for $300,000 so he could write, comfortably, his next novel.
Capote claimed that he had his own version of
In Search of Lost Time
in mind .
One in which the gossip of that high society to which he had access would prevail.
It was going to be a real bomb, he said.
But did he write?
No, he said that he had written it, and asked for more money.
The publisher even advanced him a million dollars.
Under pressure, in 1975 he published a couple of chapters in
Esquire
magazine .
One of them, the one called
La Côte Basque
in honor of the restaurant where he met with Babe and the rest, his
swans
, blew up, effectively, everything.
Chloë Sevigny as CZ Guest, the muse of Warhol and Dalí. Image provided by FX
Anna Woodward, a former
showgirl
married to another of those magnates - in the series played amazingly, in just one scene, by Demi Moore -, committed suicide with cyanide after reading it - in the chapter it was said that she had killed her husband , which he had done, with a shot -, and the disdain with which he spoke of the goings-on of the rest - a very large rest, and in the hands of authentic, also divas of interpretation: CZ Guest (Chloë Sevigny), the muse of Warhol and Dalí;
Slim Keith (Diane Lane), Jackie Kennedy's little sister, Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart)—forced her so-called friends—were they ever friends?—to ostracize him, because he had played with fire and burned himself to death. to the point that it ruined his life and definitively led to his downfall.
He died dethroned and drunk in 1984, a victim of unbearable ostracism for someone who lived by telling
lives
.
Murphy has turned such a gruesome and poisonous battle into an interpretive feast that is enjoyed as dreamily as the camera—always attentive to the textures of the satin, to an incitingly hypnotic half light—allows you, and that, in addition, reflects on what has been lost—or never had—at the summit—authentic
life
, or
fidelity
and honesty—and, even more interesting, the ultimate reason for Capote's attack: the poor boy whose gift for telling stories led to the highest to have the possibility of
avenging
his mother (a providential Jessica Lange), whom these types of women always despised.
A revenge that gives a twist to the fable of the ugly duckling - whose rise and fall are narrated here - who, no, was never accepted, but returned to say the last word, and, in any case, ended up crushed by the power of the
swans
.
The unfinished
Answered Prayers
—just three written chapters—serve as battered proof.
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