Scott Cooper’s “The Pale Blue Eye”
The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
Revisionist historical that never quite manages to be more than average despite a collection of massive talent
If that summary to this review looks familiar, it’s because I’ve taken the summary for the last review I did for Scott Cooper’s “Hostiles” and replaced “western” with “historical” because it has the same flaws and strengths. It looks great(most of the time), the acting talent on show is enormous but the script adapted from the eponymous novel by Louis Bayard is all over the place. Frustratingly, it sails along as an atmospheric murder mystery successfully until it hits a scene so ridiculous, it invalidates what came before and derails the film. Having not read the book, I can’t say for certain but it’s likely this fault lies within the source material itself but that isn’t the full extent of the flaws.
Set in 1830 at the West Point Military Academy, it tells the story of veteran constable Augustus Landor(Christian Bale) who drafted in to investigate the grisly murder of a cadet. Attending the school is a young Edgar Allan Poe(played magnificently by Harry Melling) who is something of a sleuth himself and the dynamic between Poe and Landor is at the heart of the film. There’s a convincing and interesting chemistry between the two which carries the film along until things derail. It’s at that point of the film when things go south that various plot holes emerge and character motivations suddenly look bizarre and ridiculous.
In terms of the look of the film, it has a very limited colour palette and the blue toy soldier uniforms of the cadettes looks terrific particularly when in the outdoors, but there are key moments in the film that clearly mean to be of significant emotional impact which are so obviously green screened that it’s distracting. It’s a shame because the scenes shot outdoors do a lot to add to the atmosphere of cold isolation.
I so dearly want to vent my frustrations at the point in the story that crashes but don’t wish to spoil it. I’ll just say that it begins with a line of dialogue which you’ll think you’ve misheard but will soon come to realise you haven’t.
Comparing this with Cooper’s previous film, I’d say this works more of its runtime than “Hostiles” partially because this has some dashes of humour and an interesting relationship at its core but it suffers from an inconsistent tone and some unconvincing sets. Even the tone of the acting ranges from Bale’s sombre constable to the hammy but fun portrayal of Poe by Melling; the two performances work best together, perhaps balancing each other out. Timothy Spall, Simon McBurney and Toby Jones are good as supporting characters though never really go beyond caricature. Gillian Anderson plays a bonkers and deliberately quirky role that works well enough until logic flies out the window.
There’s also something about these two films which is hard to pinpoint. They look pretty, have some great performances but they don’t seem to have a soul.
