Imagine you have a house, it's a pretty average house really. Structure is fine, not too many surprises there. Now imagine that Stefania Cella stopped by to decorate the house to look like it existed in the Hudson Valley of New York during the 1830's. Masanobu Takayanagi also shows up and puts a heavy layer of fog and dramatic lighting about the place. Howard Shore provides lush, tense and sophisticated music to underscore the arrival of the guests: Christian Bale, Harry Melling and Toby Jones. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Robert Duvall wander around for a bit with very little to do, eating cocktail weenies to pass the time..
And so it is with 'The Pale Blue Eye,' the new film by Scott Cooper which presents a pretty straight forward murder mystery but with a twist: Edgar Allan Poe is involved in the investigation. The other main character is Augustus Landor (Christain Bale) who is featured in one of Poe's final works but who is expanded upon by Louis Bayard in his book on which this movie is based. There has been a bizarre murder at the West Point Military Academy and Landor is brought in to solve the case, being a renowned solver of bizarre murders that he is.
The reputation of the academy is at risk and Landor is sworn to secrecy as he begins to uncover various links and untold stories involving the dead student. He also meets a young cadet by the name of Edgar Allan Poe who offers some learned insights into the various motivations at work amongst all the recruits. This portion takes up much of the runtime of the film: who knows who, who saw who do a thing, etc. We learn more about the lead characters - Landor has mysterious flashbacks to his lost daughter, Poe still talks to his dead mother twenty years on. We meet the family of the local doctor (Toby Jones) and his high strung wife (Gillian Anderson), including their son (Harry Lawtey) and daughter Lea (Lucy Boynton) for whom young Poe develops an affection for. There is also a second grisly murder, but with some strange differences suggesting that someone else may have been involved..
And so the viewer is ushered through various machinations as 'The Pale Blue Eye' slowly starts to reveal its secrets. There isn't much guessing involved, as the story kind of walks you through many of the solutions. There is a twist at the end, which isn't that easy to figure out, but the fact that there will be a twist is - based on some unresolved information eluded to earlier. The story is very average and feels like a solid 'Black Mirror' episode stretched out to feature length; a cop / buddy comedy but sad and tragic. Like Jack Clayton's 'The Innocents' but too relaxed to really capture that stiffled repressed tension.
Christain Bale uses many of his established skills in his portrayal of Landor, but doesn't roll out many new ones. The real find here is Harry Melling, who brings quite a bit to the role of Edgar Allan Poe. There is a real vulnerability in his slightly crossed eyes and the physical resemblance to the actual Poe is uncanny. I wish the film spent more time with him instead of wandering around the dark woods looking for answers to questions that weren't that interesting to begin with. 'The Pale Blue Eye' does do quite a few things right on a technical level but really fails to engage the viewer intellectually, which is a shame considering the fascinating characters they had to work with. 6/10.
And so it is with 'The Pale Blue Eye,' the new film by Scott Cooper which presents a pretty straight forward murder mystery but with a twist: Edgar Allan Poe is involved in the investigation. The other main character is Augustus Landor (Christain Bale) who is featured in one of Poe's final works but who is expanded upon by Louis Bayard in his book on which this movie is based. There has been a bizarre murder at the West Point Military Academy and Landor is brought in to solve the case, being a renowned solver of bizarre murders that he is.
The reputation of the academy is at risk and Landor is sworn to secrecy as he begins to uncover various links and untold stories involving the dead student. He also meets a young cadet by the name of Edgar Allan Poe who offers some learned insights into the various motivations at work amongst all the recruits. This portion takes up much of the runtime of the film: who knows who, who saw who do a thing, etc. We learn more about the lead characters - Landor has mysterious flashbacks to his lost daughter, Poe still talks to his dead mother twenty years on. We meet the family of the local doctor (Toby Jones) and his high strung wife (Gillian Anderson), including their son (Harry Lawtey) and daughter Lea (Lucy Boynton) for whom young Poe develops an affection for. There is also a second grisly murder, but with some strange differences suggesting that someone else may have been involved..
And so the viewer is ushered through various machinations as 'The Pale Blue Eye' slowly starts to reveal its secrets. There isn't much guessing involved, as the story kind of walks you through many of the solutions. There is a twist at the end, which isn't that easy to figure out, but the fact that there will be a twist is - based on some unresolved information eluded to earlier. The story is very average and feels like a solid 'Black Mirror' episode stretched out to feature length; a cop / buddy comedy but sad and tragic. Like Jack Clayton's 'The Innocents' but too relaxed to really capture that stiffled repressed tension.
Christain Bale uses many of his established skills in his portrayal of Landor, but doesn't roll out many new ones. The real find here is Harry Melling, who brings quite a bit to the role of Edgar Allan Poe. There is a real vulnerability in his slightly crossed eyes and the physical resemblance to the actual Poe is uncanny. I wish the film spent more time with him instead of wandering around the dark woods looking for answers to questions that weren't that interesting to begin with. 'The Pale Blue Eye' does do quite a few things right on a technical level but really fails to engage the viewer intellectually, which is a shame considering the fascinating characters they had to work with. 6/10.