It is the year of 1830. A juvenile cadet is discovered hanging from a tree at West Point, New York. His passing is initially regarded as a suicide. Until someone breaks into the mortuary overnight and removes his heart from his chest. The Pale Blue Eye by Scott Cooper is a bleak and gothic voyage through pre-Civil War America during a time when the nation was struggling to shed its European shroud and looking for its own identity. Edgar Alan Poe, America’s foremost author of the macabre, was inspired by the unrest of the time. Cooper uses Poe’s legacy and sinister character with a classically solemn look to unravel a story that is both captivating and drenched in grim romance.
The story, which is based on Louis Bayard’s novel, is set in the dead of winter, when every building is covered in snow and the woods have a chilly, desolate feeling. Superintendent Thayer (Timothy Spall) and Captain Hitchcock (Simon McBurney), the academy’s patrician leaders, hire Augustus Landor (Christian Bale in a reflective and inward performance), a detective who suffers from alcoholism and the unsolved death of his daughter. Landor spends his days sitting in his empty house or going on solitary walks in the forest until it’s time to get a drink at the neighborhood tavern. He occasionally finds solace with the barmaid. Landor has a stringy beard (Charlotte Gainsbourg). He would undoubtedly vanish into thin air if this probe hadn’t been assigned to him.
Landor begins by questioning the victim’s fellow cadets, a tiny group of aggressive pupils who appear to be united by a code of conduct. Additionally, he has drawn-out arguments with the clumsy coroner, Dr. Marquis (Toby Jones). Landor explores less and drinks more when inspiration strikes, as he slowly reaches a dead end. Here comes the clumsy but incredibly intelligent cadet, Edgar Alan Poe (Harry Melling). Melling’s Poe is like the withdrawn goth guy in high school, but one who is educated in the classics and brooding, honest, and unpredictably hilarious. He will recite French poetry at the drop of a hat or discuss his passion for death. One night at the tavern, Poe tells the inebriated detective his hypothesis about the crime: “The murderer is a poet!” Landry is so impressed by the young cadet’s remarkable passion and talent that he decides to hire him to assist with the investigation.
Poe infiltrates the clique of cadets that the victim’s purported pals claim to be part of. There, he meets Cadet Artemus Marquis (Harry Lawtey) and Lea Marquis (Lucy Boynton), who immediately capture Poe’s attention. The killings begin to increase as he learns some horrible secrets about this mysterious group, which is similar to Yale’s Skull and Bones club, and the Marquis family as a whole, which includes their evil mother, who is portrayed by a ghostly Gillian Anderson.
Cooper approaches the script, which he wrote, with a restrained austerity that is welcome in a story that, given its whimsical setting, could have easily drowned in stylistic muck (think of Tim Burton’s forgettable Sleepy Hollow, which pandered to its histrionic imagery instead of the story and characters). Cooper never becomes intoxicated by the images, despite Masanobu Takayanagi’s cinematography’s breathtaking beauty in its chilly, leaden vistas and drippy, dreggy interiors. Instead, he emphasizes the idiosyncrasies and flaws of his characters. With a few glitches at the conclusion, the director’s third film with Bale maintains an undercurrent of suspense and dread as well. The movie has a peaceful tone, with the exception of Howard Shore’s score, which occasionally tends to overpower the story. Some spectators might be dissatisfied with the director’s lack of ostentation in this portrayal of Poe’s adolescence because the author’s legacy continues to burn bright in goth hipsterdom. You went to the wrong haunted house if you were looking for a cartoonish Wednesday Addams-style rendition. Cynics shouldn’t try Cooper. He doesn’t fit into the extremely sarcastic zeitgeist of the present like Poe did.
Cooper has managed to remain unnoticed by the public for a good number of years as a director who proudly displays his deep affinity for 1970s drama. From his debut film, Crazy Heart, which won Jeff Bridges an Academy Award, through his most recent work, it is obvious that he is drawn to troubled people who have negative secrets and histories. Similar themes have been explored by him in the crime drama Black Mass, the drama Out of the Furnace, the underappreciated western Hostiles, and the horror film Antlers from 2021. Unluckily, a couple of these movies had unrealistic plotlines and huge plot gaps. The same is true for this one. The movie occasionally veers sharply to the left into ludicrous phantasmagoria, which is inconsistent with the remainder of its secular tone. Fortunately, it overcomes this “magical” phase, and we are given a clever twist.
Despite certain narrative flaws, Cooper excels at dissecting ambiguous protagonists, and Poe most certainly fits the bill. We start to worry about young Poe and his impending struggles with opium and suffering toward the end of the film because he is both hasty and sensitive, inventive but self-destructive. He fits the bill for these tenacious traits in many respects. He is able to illuminate the chinks in people’s armour in The Pale Blue Eye, a story about the bond between a blossoming poet who is attracted by darkness and a broken-down detective who lives in it. This surprising jewel occasionally dwells quite at ease in a dark, ominous, and strange area.
