McGrath has enough self-consciousness to give his movie a definite shape, but it lacks the awards-seeking self-consciousness that channels the audience's responses, making them embarrassed to say they didn't care for it. The virtues of Infamous are probably what will keep it from getting the recognition it deserves, in the short run. In Capote, the irony was so pre-conceived that although Truman Capote came across as ambiguous, the experience of the movie was not. In Infamous, McGrath's writing is a bit set, his conception fully formed, but it preserves the unexpectedness of experience and the realizations experience brings. Infamous keeps alight what Amadeus (1984) snuffed — a tragicomedy about the perversities of artistic inspiration and achievement. It's as much fun as a fundamentally disturbing anecdote could possibly be.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
.jpg?t=20130517094513)
Article comments
1 - Michael J. West
Well! Of all of the many reviews I've read that compared Capote to Infamous--and of course the comparison is inevitable--that makes...one, that thought Capote was the lesser.