Louis Bayard’s novel The Pale Blue Eye has now been adapted for the Netflix screens. The movie released on the platform on January 6, 2023, having received select big-screen premieres earlier. With a runtime of 130 minutes, it has been directed by Scott Cooper, marking his third project with the illustrious Christian Bale, who dons the bowler hat for his leading role of Detective Augustus Landor.
Other big names joining the film are Harry Melling, Gillian Anderson, Toby Jones, Lucy Boynton and more. The chilling cinematography, which remains to be the most stellar visual of the movie, has been completed by Masanobu Takayanagi, with Cooper and Bale being accompanied by Tyler Thompson and John Lesher for the production.
Netflix describes the movie as follows:
In this gothic thriller, a retired detective recruits a young Edgar Allan Poe to help him investigate a murder at West Point.
-The Pale Blue Eye Review Does Not Contain Spoilers-
What’s the Movie About? The highly esteemed private eye Augustus Landor is summoned to the West Point Military Academy in 1830 where a cadet was hanged to death. The gruff and drained old man walks in with his expertise to conclude that the demise may not have been a suicide attempt, but a murder instead. Not ending there, he also must dig into the heinous act of the body being desecrated post-death, as its been cut open and is devoid of the heart. Suspicions arise, but with the conditions registered by the higher-ups about following out the tracks discreetly, Landor hires help from an outcast insider to get better input of the cadets’ lives.
From the get go, Bale’s Landor speaks of everyone holding on to their secrets, and it’s all evident in their expressions as well, and so opens the whodunit with its quintessential foundation. The Pale Blue Eye follows previous sleuth sagas like Netflix’s own Knives Out series and adaptations of Agatha Christie’s mysteries. However, this entry fits appropriately into the gothic presentation and isn’t anything like the aforementioned movies of the genre. It rather dabbles with complimenting themes like the occult and supernatural, further adding on to the cold fever of the chilly climate of the year, which pushes you to snuggle into a cozy comfort.
Ultimately, Bale’s presence is made out to be too big despite other stellar cast members being there. His melancholic visage deserves the applause, but it blocks out the room for other things to surface higher. A darkness is at large when it comes to the plot itself, but it never finds the space to settle into the paramount seat of focus. The lore pertaining to necromancy is studied, but only barely, and merely spoken into existence, due to which the mystery aspect doesn’t leave an impact on you despite its eventual resolution.
As you question why the same didn’t work out for you, the answer is handed out in the last quarter of the film, which flips everything around, and that’s when the lacuna of better characterisation comes forth as a deliberate tactic employed by the writing to fulfil the underlying vision. You’d be surprised to see countless familiar faces like Lucy Boynton, Gillian Anderson, Robert Duvall, Timothy Spall and Toby Jones. However, they never catch a moment to shine outrightly, and it leaves you with a pit even if the intentions of the storytelling needed this as an instrument of its own.
Melling and Bale’s chemistry puts on the much-needed comforting relief on a rather cold platter, especially with Melling’s Edgar Allan Poe balancing out every gloomy impulse. Leading with his Southern accent, he reveals a latent side to the fictional output of the famed poet, which we can’t help but adore.
The Pale Blue Eye: Worth the Watch?
Earnest literature buffs will find a liking for the movie and its poetic countenance, and will also marvel at the aesthetics of the movie, even if they find the mystery portion of it treading gradually. When it comes to going for another round, you may not be able to work up the appetite to watch it again. The first watch itself though leaves you with a polished beauty of gothic creativity. The initial investigation takes on a rather slow-footed approach, yet you stay behind, not so much for the mystery to unfold, but for the actors therein who hold up striking performances even with the limited scope available to them.
This is not your usual Sherlock-Watson ride, most evidently, because Harry Melling’s side-kick persona almost instantly catches up speed with the grand involvement of Bale, and makes it his own. My only wish was for other great actors enrolled to rise up to the occasion on a similar note. From the direction point of view, Scott Cooper’s perspective gives you a taste of that frosty and unilluminated snow-capped mask of landscape hiding its very own cold-hearted disturbances underneath, but the writing doesn’t enliven those thoughts as well as one had hoped.
The Pale Blue Eye is now streaming on Netflix.
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