If Netflix’s Christmas Present was Benoit Blanc’s second investigation lived with glass onionto start the new year, Reed Hastings’ streaming service aims to involve its subscribers with a new crime film, moving the emotional figure from Rian Johnson’s funny approach to the more tense and biting one of Scott Cooper, director of The Pale Blue Eye – the West Point Murders. After a rapid passage in American theaters during the Christmas period, a practice adopted by streaming channels to be able to enter their productions in the Oscar lottery, the new Netflix film is preparing to reach the small screen on January 6, showing us a tormented Christian Bale alongside by none other than Edgar Allan Poe.
The fictional presence of the famous gothic novelist is the result of a historically real element, his brief stay in the famous West Point military academy, which has become the cornerstone of a novel by Louis Bayard, an author known to be a specialist in this type of story , where historical characters and real events are adapted within a fictitious scenario, showing surprising aspects. Stimulated by the figure of Poe, Cooper does not fail to rework Bayard’s intuition in a film with cold and disturbing tones, finding again in Bale, with whom he has already collaborated for Hostiles and The Fire of Vengeancea fine performer for the tormented detective Augustus Landor.
Netflix explores the myth of Edgar Allan Poe with the disturbing investigation of The Pale Blue Eye – The West Point Murders
In the winter of 1830, the military academy at West Point is plagued by a series of heinous crimes. The first case is the hanging of a cadet, whose heart is removed from the corpse kept in the structure’s morgue. An act of inexplicable cruelty that pushes the leaders of the military school to request the help of a man believed to be the best investigator in the area: Augustus Landor. Once one of New York’s top detectives, Landor is now a broken soul after the death of his wife and the mysterious disappearance of his daughter. Known for his exceptional intuition and his atypical approach to investigations, Landor is then assigned to solve this brutal murder, despite the hostility of the military environment to his edgy and irreverent personality.
To be able to move freely within the closed military mentality, Landor finds in the young cadet Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling) an unusual but promising ally. In Poe, a man who seems anything but inclined for military life, Landor discovers a restless soul, linked to an intimate spiritualism that leads him to convince himself that he hears the voice of his dead mother, but above all a young man who lives his perennial feeling of being a pariah by constructing a fictitious personality based on a poetic vein which from fiction will become his artistic personality. An atypical pair of detectives, based on torment as a tool to better understand the cracks in the human soul, which allows Landor and Poe to reveal the disturbing truth behind what appears to be a series of ritual murders.
The aspect of bland esotericism certainly could not be missing in a story involving a figure dear to horror enthusiasts like Poe. In the American novelist’s production, the declination of horror does not touch the sphere of gore or physicality, but focuses on the emotional sphere, aiming at a feeling of oppressive tension that leads to almost liberating moments. Bayard himself, author of the short story on which it is based on The Pale Blue Eye – The West Point Murderstakes the famous story as its starting point The revealing hearta starting point that links this story to the myth of Poe, suggesting to Cooper how to delicately present the typical iconography of the writer.
Cooper does not lack, in fact, of gracefully cite clear references to Poe’s imagery, from the ubiquitous crow to the quick mention of Lenore, the sad protagonist of a Poe poem whose origins are blandly traced back to this early feat of the novelist. Playing on these aspects, Cooper sets up an investigation that is mainly based on the intimate aspect of the protagonists, giving little space to smiles and serenity, aiming instead to show a suffering and cursed humanity, letting the most tormented souls lead this macabre dance. A vision that seems to be the hallmark of Cooper’s artistic vision, which in The Pale Blue Eye – The West Point Murders is declined in a icy visual portraitcharacterized by photography that favors cold tones, broken by sudden flashes of heat that herald moments of disturbing revelation.
A narrative weave that seeks a simplicity of the investigative element, leaving the trace of the protagonists’ suffered emotionality to dominate. Bale again immerses himself in a character in a total way, making him the perfect interpreter, bringing a tormented Landor to the screen, in search of a fake refuge fueled by alcohol but still sufficiently lucid to be able to operate as an unparalleled investigator. A role that sees a perfect partner in Melling’s Poe, who behind his melancholic rebel mask hides a fragile personality, atypical in his passions yet fascinating for his peculiar affinity to gothic poetics and his predisposition to drama.
Suffered humanity and atavistic mysteries
Two intense protagonists who are further enhanced by a first-rate cast, among which the mysterious occultist expert played by a calm Robert Duvall and Mr and Mrs Marquis, played by the extraordinary couple Tobey Jones and Gillian Anderson. Central to the history of The Pale Blue Eye – The West Point Murders, the Marquis are presented as an apparently traditional family, but the two actors do not fail to skillfully let the typical traits of a terrible hidden secret emerge, which slowly and meandering takes more and more shape, resulting in hysterical madness that leads to a ancient ritualism. Tobey Jones moves on the scene with a measured and appreciable acting, while Gillian Anderson has a more disruptive role, made up of noble mannerisms and darting emotional outbursts.
Intense interpretations that require both expressive and vocal commitment, a trait that nThe Italian adaptation leaves something to be desired in some passagesespecially for Anderson, who in the Italian audio is cloying at times, making a key character of the plot almost an operetta caricature and not a woman characterized by a personality linked to ancient traditions.
With The Pale Blue Eye – The West Poin Murderst, Netflix offers its viewers a story crime with the disturbing colors typical of Poe’s poetics, aiming for a scathing emotional pressure on the viewer. Cooper directs carefully, making the most of the winter setting to create a parallel with the cold inner world of the characters, helping to create a story devoid of warmth but strongly human in its tragedy.
