Cinema verite, with touch-ups

Movie stars are almost always smaller in person than they appear on the screen.

But there’s an exception to every rule. In this case, Charlize Theron. I was standing in a hotel hallway at the Toronto film festival the other day, chatting with film financier Graham King, when along came Theron, bounding down the hall, her every stride seemingly long enough to hurdle an Olympic broad-jump pit on the fly. In her new film, “North Country,” which is inspired by a real-life story, she plays a single mom whose fight to keep her job in the iron mines of northern Minnesota sparked the first-ever class-action lawsuit for sexual harassment.

In the movie she seems dwarfed by the burly men who work around her in the mines. But here, in a hotel corridor, King and I, both easily over 6 feet, felt a little bit like Frodo looking up at Gandalf. Maybe it was her 4-inch heels, but this is what movies do: They not only change actors’ proportions, but they inevitably reshape and distort reality too.

It’s been impossible here not to ponder the idea of how movies reimagine real life, since this year’s festival is overflowing with movies based on real events. In addition to “North Country,” there is a steady stream of films meditating on real people, from “The Notorious Bettie Page,” about the celebrated pinup queen, to “Stoned,” a portrait of the late Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones.

Many of the reality-inspired pictures feature performances that will generate big-time buzz during Oscar season. They include Theron’s turn in “North Country,” Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of Truman Capote in “Capote,” Joaquin Phoenix’s take on Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line” and perhaps even Anthony Hopkins’ performance as the New Zealand motorcycle racer Burt Munro in “The World’s Fastest Indian.”

What makes these films so fascinating is that they use radically different approaches to interpreting their real-life subjects. In an era in which so many movies have been belittled or abused for taking liberties with real life, from “JFK” to “A Beautiful Mind,” the time seemed right to ask filmmakers to explain their methods -- and their motivations -- for turning fact into fiction.

“North Country” takes the greatest liberties with its story -- in fact, all but one of its characters are invented -- and yet it feels absolutely true in spirit. Much of the credit for this goes to New Zealand filmmaker Niki Caro, who immersed herself as much in the mores of northern Minnesota mining towns as she did in depicting the Maori culture in her last film, “Whale Rider.” Because of legal difficulties, Caro and screenwriter Michael Seitzman retained only the broadest outlines of the book that the film is based on, transforming Lois Jenson, the real central woman in the case, into Josey Aimes, the character played by Theron.

“The book was about a 22-year legal battle, and let me tell you, that makes for a well-researched but very convoluted story,” says Caro. “Frankly, most of these women were so damaged by the events they’d lived through that, I thought, they don’t need to go through it again with a movie.” But Caro still turned to the real women for crucial assistance before filming began. “They advised myself and the actresses on every critical detail. There is nothing glib about the ‘inspired by’ label. We were truly inspired by what they went through in their fight.”

Before filming began, Caro went to the small Minnesota towns where the women live and tried to help them understand what kind of effect the film could have. It wasn’t an easy job. “They had a lot of trepidation,” she says. In fact, the film is rated R largely because of the graphic nature of the crude sexual hazing and abuse and violent acts that the women were subjected to. “Many of them had gone back to the mines before the book came out, which made things especially rough. One woman didn’t leave her house for two years because she was so ashamed of what she’d been through.”

Caro recently showed the women a rough cut of the film. They were especially moved by the footage that shows the wintry contours of the land from high up in the sky. “They’d lived there all their lives, but they’d never seen the landscape that way before,” Caro says. “They oohed and aahed ... but then they got very quiet and, well, they all began to cry.” Caro stares down at her glass of water, her eyes misting over a bit. “I guess I feel pretty emotional about it too,” she finally says.

Director, actor reunited

While Caro brought a fresh eye to her film, veteran New Zealand filmmaker Roger Donaldson came to “The World’s Fastest Indian” with plenty of experience. One of his first films was a documentary about Munro and his motorcycle racing exploits. Having known Munro for years before his death in 1978, Donaldson has crammed the film with personal details, from his deafness to his irresistible charm, even at 70, with older women. Donaldson shot the New Zealand portions of the film in Munro’s hometown, using real Munro motorcycle parts as props in the film.

The film reunites Donaldson with Hopkins, who worked together, not entirely amicably, two decades ago on “The Bounty.” “We fought a lot,” recalls Hopkins. “Roger wasn’t blessed with English politesse, but I was young and cocky -- I was my own worst enemy. But we’d gotten to be friends again. I’ve done real people before [he played the lead in Oliver Stone’s ‘Nixon’], and the idea is to try to understand their psychology. Make it come from the inside out, not the outside in.”

Much of the movie traces Munro’s travels in 1963-era America as he makes his way from Los Angeles to Speed Week at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, where he hopes to set a new speed record with his ancient, hand-tooled motorcycle. The film offers a wonderful portrait of American generosity of spirit. On his route, Munro is befriended by a gallery of only-in-America characters, including a transvestite Hollywood motel manager, a Latino used-car salesman, an elderly Indian who gives him a native remedy for prostate trouble and a young GI on leave from Vietnam.

“The optimism in the film is really based on my own experience of coming to America,” says Donaldson. In the film, unfamiliar with American currency, Munro gives someone an outlandish $10 tip. “That was me,” says Donaldson. “I left a guy a $100 tip for a cup of coffee and he followed me out and gave it back, saying, ‘I don’t think you meant to leave me this much money.’ ”

Some of the film’s most telling details are lifted from the creative team’s memories of their fathers. In the film, Munro always urinates under his lemon tree, something Donaldson’s dad did. And Munro’s habit in the film of whistling distractedly comes from Hopkins’ father. “He was a baker, and he’d whistle when he brought his bread to people’s houses,” says Hopkins. “I tried it out, and it seemed to fit Burt perfectly.”

‘Informed imagination’

“Capote” focuses on the writer’s obsessive reporting of a brutal 1959 murder of a Kansas family, which became the book “In Cold Blood,” a riveting tale that was a groundbreaking exercise in new journalism. Having seen how much Capote stretched the boundaries between fact and fiction in his own book, not to mention his own life, the “Capote” filmmakers knew they would have to use what director Bennett Miller calls “an informed imagination” to get at the heart of their central character. Much of the film is based on an in-depth biography by Gerald Clarke and Capote’s letters. But many key sequences rely on composite characters and shrewd dramatic invention.

The result is not always a flattering portrait. But thanks in large part to Hoffman’s performance, the filmmakers capture Capote’s seductive manner and what Miller calls his “predatory ambition.” “While we were obedient to the literal truth, we didn’t want to lose sight of the more tragic aspects of his character,” says Miller.

Some scenes are based in fact, as when Capote bribes a prison warden to get unrestricted access to interview the jailed killers. Other key moments from his intense relationship with killer Perry Smith, notably Capote feeding baby food to Smith and giving him a Thoreau novel for jailhouse reading, are largely invention.

Still, the choice of Thoreau makes perfect dramatic sense, since Capote was a genius at relating to his subjects and unerringly finding their weak spot. “It was the perfect gift for Perry, who saw himself, like Thoreau, as an outsider persecuted by society,” says Miller. “It made him feel good about himself, which is just what Capote wanted.”

Capote never taped his subjects or even took notes -- he boasted that he had 94% recall, often teasing Clarke for recording his interviews with him. The tapes came in handy. Hoffman would listen to Capote’s distinctive voice before each day of shooting. When I saw the critic Rex Reed, who knew Capote, at a screening here, I asked him for an appraisal of Hoffman’s portrayal. “I had some problems with his accent -- it was like he was talking with two fingers on his tongue,” Reed says. “But he got that thing Truman did with his eye right. He was always rubbing it. So I guess it was pretty close.”

One of Hoffman’s rare disagreements with Miller was over how to play Capote’s reaction to Perry Smith’s execution. “Philip insisted it would be wrong for him to break down and be so emotional,” Miller recalls. “But, of course, when we rolled camera, he proceeded to do exactly what he’d argued against. It’s what makes his performance feel so real. When he entered a scene, he was no longer thinking like an actor. He was thinking like Truman Capote would think.”

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Big Picture columnist Patrick Goldstein is on assignment at the Toronto International Film Festival. He can be e-mailed at patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.