TOarrives today on Netflix The Pale Blue Eye – The West Point Murderslatest film by Scott Cooper with Christian Bale, based on the novel of the same name by Louis Bayard. It is a cerebral thriller, made up of little action and many puzzles. A full-blown psychological yellowsealed by the presence in the film of the “king” of psychological thrillers, Edgar Allen Poe, before he became the famous writer. To interpret it perfectly is Harry Melling (impressive also the physical resemblance).
Everything smacks of mystery: the dark colours, the fog, the music, the slow rhythms of the scenes, the courtly dialogues of another era (it is set in 1830). Investigations into the American Military Academy at West Point also leave room for esotericism and satanic rituals. But the real protagonist is the human soul. The drives and instincts that lead a person to make crazy and violent gestures. The homage to Allan Poe’s literature is evident: horrors have motivationsusually very complex. And at the end nothing is as it appears.
The Pale Blue Eyethe mystery of the cadet hanged with his heart removed
It is the winter of 1830 at the United States Military Academy at West Point, upstate New York. Everything is snow and ice. The chill also enters the bones of the viewer. Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) he is the best detective around, weighed down however by personal traumas. He has been a widower for a couple of years and misses his daughter Matilde. Resigned and tired, he abandoned the investigation.
Suddenly is called into service to investigate the mysterious death of a cadet who is found hanged. To make the death more tragic, it is the analysis of the coroner who ascertains that from the body of the corpse the heart was precisely removed.
The Academy has just been inaugurated, the directors fear repercussions. They therefore want to solve the case quickly. But Landor’s investigation turns out to be more complicated than expected. The recruits, faithful to the “code of silence”, keep their mouths shut. So the investigator decides to involve a cadet in the case who is presented to him as a poet. It deals with of the young Edgar Allan Poe, budding writer with a restless soul, deeply intolerant of rigid military schemes and with an extravagant attitude that led him to be derided by many.
Christian Bale is Detective Augustus Landor with Harry Melling playing Edgar Allan Poe. (Netflix)
The Pale Blue Eye: when the case seems solved, another truth is discovered
There is a good harmony between Landor and Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s flair and creativity seem to help the detective. But soon the Academy is shocked by the death of another cadet. The dynamics are the same: the young man is found hanged without his heart. The Institute directors’ anxiety grows. The pressure on Landor is growing stronger.
The investigator manages to enter more and more into the dynamics of the life of the Academy and finally solves the case by identifying the evidence of the culprit. But when everything seems clear, comes the twist. young Poe, madly in love with Lea (Lucy Boynton), daughter of the doctor of the Academy, discovers another truth, which turns everything upside down.
Reflections on what drives man to violence
The Pale Blue Eye, a two-hour-and-ten movie, seems to start in the last forty minutes. Because only at this point the scenes become more exciting and the tangled plot gives strong palpitations.
First the slow pace, the foggy and cold atmosphere, the austerity of the military rigor of the early nineteenth century (very well represented), are likely to lead to some yawning. We must resist. This slowness serves to describe in depth the characters who, it turns out, hide secrets and traumas so powerful as to make them, in the end, absolutely the opposite of what they seem.
Very sparkling and deepthroughout the film, the dialogues between Landor and Edgar Allan Poe. The two continuously exchange important reflections on life, on the meaning of death, on lost affections. And melancholy does not weigh. On the contrary, it helps to question the real motivations that drive human beings to act. Both for good and (more often) for bad.
Christian Bale. (Netflix)
Was Edgar Ann Poe Really at West Point Academy?
In The Pale Blue Eye fiction and reality are constantly intertwined. The story told is not real, and the investigations into the deaths themselves turn out to be just one way to explore the psychological implications that hide behind a yellow.
But it is true that the young Edgar Allan Poe attended the Military Academy of West Point in 1830. Eclectic and creative, he did not like military life, and from a very young age he tried to publish small works and poems. But, having grown up without parents (his father abandoned him, his mother died when he was very young, he was then adopted by a family with whom he had bad relations), not being able to support himself, he had chosen to lend service in the army.
This experience was short lived. After a few months Poe dropped out of the Academy going towards the court martial. He was, in fact, tried for gross negligence and disobedience to an order for refusing to participate in training, education and religious rites.
In 1831, the young Poe in New York published his third book of poems with the help of his former fellow cadets, who have made a collection to finance his project. They admired the satirical lines Poe had written about his commanders and hoped to find new ones. Poe dedicated that volume to them.
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