Jason Bailey
Scott Cooper’s The Pale Blue Eye begins with an Edgar Allan Poe quote, which turns out to be more than mere mood-setting – much like James McTeigue’s unfortunate The Raven a few years back, this is a Gothic mystery thriller that not only invokes the mood of Poe’s work, but places him in the narrative as a central character. The Pale Blue Eye is a vast improvement over that film (not a high bar to clear, admittedly), a nifty little mystery with atmosphere to spare, albeit one that overstays its welcome a bit.
Cooper’s first image is a haunting one: a man hanging from a tree. The time is 1830 and the place is West Point, and the hanging man is a second year cadet who was not only killed, but whose body was “violated” in the hospital ward; his heart was meticulously carved out of his chest. This all obviously looks very bad for the still-young military academy, whose powers-that-be bring in a former military man and detective, August Landor (Christian Bale), to investigate what looks less like a suicide than a murder staged to look like one. But he’s kept on a short leash. “There will be no drinking throughout this investigation,” snaps the short-fused Captain Hitchcock (Simon McBurney). “Your reputation precedes you.”
As it happens, Edgar Allen Poe (Harry Melling) is a classmate of the young murdered man; a bit of an introvert, unsurprisingly, but keenly observant and obviously intelligent. Landor makes note of this young man and asks him to serve as something of an assistant in the investigation, nosing around in the less savory circles of the school and reporting back, while Landor examines autopsy reports, gathers clues, and assures his employers that he’s very close as more victims turn up (as you know they will).
Cooper’s screenplay is adapted from Louis Bayard’s 2003 novel, and both follow the beats of the genre, but not too strenuously; there’s a shagginess to the picture, thanks to Cooper’s irresistible pull to peculiar supporting roles, as well as Bale and Melling’s lived-in characterizations. Melling is especially delightful, reveling in the character’s tics and eccentricities; there’s a wonderful moment when he’s in Landor’s home for the first time, catches a glance at the older man’s library, and gasps, delighted, “BOOKS!” before rushing over to start the inquisition. Bale is working in a nicely muted key, particularly after the (appropriate) broad theatrics of Amsterdam in the fall; he has a couple of beats in which he’s forced to talk about his estranged daughter that invoke genuinely affecting pathos.
Cooper’s regular cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi manages to make the picture appropriately dark without succumbing to the flavorless muddy look of too many Netflix productions; it’s all properly Gothic moody, full of whistling winds, scenes lit by lanterns, late-night bells tolling, and things going bump in the night. Yet daytime scenes are crisply captured, and the grisly crime scenes are rendered with enough… attention to detail to satisfy horror aficionados as well.
And the supporting cast is superb. I was just making a note of how many great British character actors are in the cast when no less than Toby Jones showed up; the performances are an appealing mix of stiff-upper-lip and roaring scenery chewing. Robert Duvall turns up briefly (as is his custom these days) but memorably as a kooky advisor, and he’s a hoot (again, as usual). Gillian Anderson overdoes it a bit as a swooning matriarch, but Lucy Boynton, forever underrated, handles several difficult moments well.
Alas, Cooper succumbs to some of the punchy pacing that has troubled his previous productions – here, the agreeably bonkers mystery comes to an appropriately buck-wild conclusion, but then there’s somehow 30 minutes left, and we realize this entirely satisfying effort is going to give us another, not entirely welcome twist. Nothing happens thereafter that sinks the picture – but there’s a case to be made that’s all epilogue, solid closing beat notwithstanding. Nevertheless, The Pale Blue Eye is a sturdy piece of genre craftsmanship, and probably the most successful of the Cooper/Bale collaborations to date.
B
“The Pale Blue Eye” is on Netflix Friday.
