capote

B and I watched CAPOTE Sunday night. A few minutes into the film, we turned on our subtitles so that we could make out what was actually being said. I'm not sure if the problem was due to our living room acoustics or Truman's abnormal speech patterns. Regardless, by the end of the film, I felt connected to the author as a person. He was caring, yet self-absorbed. He was the "life of the party" in social settings, but he also lived the rest of life as if it were a stage set to illuminate only one man: Truman. He didn't hide his obsession for his own life when he attended his dear friend Nell's celebration party for the success of her novel. Neither could he see past himself when the death sentence for the two convicts lingered on and on. He said, "Why are they doing this to me? How can they do this to me?" He was distraught and felt the waiting was "killing" him. His friends not being killed was "killing" him...interesting.

Condemnation of this type of self-absorption is easy to produce from the comfortable seat on my couch. Before I settled too far into that mode, I began feeling like I was looking less at a film/history character and more at a mirror. Capote's ability to think less of how others' life situations are affecting them and more about how those situations affect him is too easy to see in me. How often do I ask that same question, "Why are you doing this to me? How can you do this to me?" to my children or sweet husband. Unbelievably, life is not about me. Perhaps I should consider asking God to forgive me of my own self-absorption. My hope is that Jesus would take my eyes off myself enough to truly see Him and those around me.