The Pale Blue Eye movie review: Harry Melling outshines charismatic Christian Bale in Netflix’s gothic mystery
A supremely critical telling of what’s truly a singularly foolish story, The Pale Blue Eye stays on the correct facet of self-parody for over two hours, earlier than shrugging its shoulders, cracking its knuckles, and going goblin mode in its closing act. This, by the way in which, occurs an hour after Robert Duvall has dropped by as a tattooed puzzle solver named Jean-Pepe who research the occult in his spare time.
The Pale Blue Eye is so goofy that Rian Johnson may theoretically commandeer the identical script for his third Knives Out film, with solely minor changes. However regardless of the borderline overwhelming presence of a Benoit Blanc-adjacent Southern gent in his film, director Scott Cooper isn’t as inherently playful as Johnson. Actually, he’s spent the whole lot of his directorial profession making grim dramas — three of which have now starred Christian Bale.
Even the famously chameleon-like actor seems to be in a extra relaxed temper right here, as a grieving former policeman Augustus Landor, who’s employed to research the homicide of a army cadet in snowy upstate New York within the 1830s. Landor is described in a handy early exposition dump as a widower who is especially adept at ‘gloveless interrogations’.
In films like this — or, at the least the great ones — it’s important for the detective to reveal their powers of deduction earlier than we are able to purchase into their legend. The exposition dump about Augustus’ achievements is just not sufficient; we have to see him in motion. Which is what Cooper does some scenes later, when he has his protagonist smugly ‘resolve’ a minor thriller, purely for impact. However the investigation begins in earnest nearly instantly afterwards. And earlier than Augustus has even interrogated his third suspect, he has shaped a bond with a younger cadet by the identify of Edgar Allen Poe, who shortly fills the Watson position.
Performed by the sneakily phenomenal Harry Melling, who has developed such a shocking physique of labor since his Dudley Dursley days, Poe is the movie’s trump card — a death-obsessed poet who sees symbols the place Augustus sees science. As an example, he interprets the violent ripping out of the sufferer’s coronary heart because the work of a jilted lover, maybe. He’s somebody who doesn’t take issues at face worth, which makes him a enjoyable foil to the reasonably austere Augustus.
For all his faults — a pressure of silliness runs by way of his films that he pointedly refuses to acknowledge — Cooper has a knack for casting faces. The supporting forged is crammed out by wonderful character actors corresponding to Tobey Jones, who performs the coroner; Simon McBurney, who performs a captain; and Timothy Spall, who drops by because the captain’s superior. Gillian Anderson and Charlotte Gainsbourg, in the meantime, seem in prolonged cameos as mysterious girls who cross paths with Augustus in numerous methods, though neither is given a lot to do.
Cooper is a greater director than a author, that a lot has turn out to be clear now. His lengthy artistic partnership with cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, for example, has yielded some memorably spare imagery through the years, in movies corresponding to Black Mass, and the reasonably underrated Out of the Furnace. However he actually must loosen up just a little. The one time that Cooper shows any form of levity on this film is in his route of Melling. “Books!” the long run literary big exclaims within the movie’s single funniest second, working with open arms in direction of a stack of them at Augustus’ quarters. However these moments are few and much between.
The Pale Blue Eye, for essentially the most half, is a B-movie with delusions of grandeur; a facsimile of A Few Good Males with a supernatural twist. It’s engagingly staged, Melling is excellent as common, however everybody concerned is able to higher.
The Pale Blue Eye
Director – Scott Cooper
Forged – Christian Bale, Harry Melling, Simon McBurney, Gillian Anderson, Tobey Jones, Timothy Spall, Robert Duvall, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Ranking – 2.5/5
