Edgar Allan Poe turns detective in “The Pale Blue Eye,” an 1830s-set Gothic mystery that explores the writer’s formative years at the West Point military academy in upstate New York.
Written and directed by Scott Cooper, who adapted Louis Bayard’s novel of the same name, the Netflix film (streaming on January 6) stars Christian Bale as Augustus Landor, a hard-bitten detective haunted by a past tragedy. When a West Point cadet is found hanging from a tree in the chilly morning fog, only for an autopsy to reveal that someone carved his heart from his chest, Landor is called in to deduce the culprit. Soon, he befriends a cadet by the name of Poe and invites him to assist with the investigation. Portrayed by Harry Melling as an eccentric young man riveted by the macabre, Poe has not emerged as a literary critic during his time at West Point, nor has he published “The Raven,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” or any of the other works that will one day cement him as a key figure in American literature.
As such, Melling sees “The Pale Blue Eye” less as an origin story for the master of Gothic fiction and more as a reintroduction to the real man beneath the myth. Best known for playing Dudley Dursely across the “Harry Potter” films, Melling has since honed his craft across a series of theatrically ersatz and arresting roles — as an armless, legless Shakespearean actor in the Coen Brothers’ “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” heir Malcolm in Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” and sexually awakened beatnik Arthur in Amanda Kramer’s “Please Baby Please.” Cooper cast Melling based on his role in the former film, a Western anthology.
Known for brooding portraits of the American heartland, from spiritually enervated crime saga “Out of the Furnace” and morosely existential Western “Hostiles,” Cooper jumped at the chance to reunite with Bale, the star of both those films, and tell a story set during a different historical era. Cooper first wanted to adapt “The Pale Blue Eye” over a decade ago, writing dozens of drafts of the screenplay in between discussing with Bale what he came to think of as a dream project.
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“The Pale Blue Eye” also furthers Cooper’s work in horror after “Antlers,” a grimly atmospheric creature feature that he describes in our interview, smiling, as “an intimate film about family trauma.”
A work of shivering, snow-laden atmosphere that, like Howard Shore’s haunting score, seems to seep into the character’s bones, “The Pale Blue Eye” unfurls its whodunit across two hours, filled with unsettling turns by Gillian Anderson, Timothy Spall, Toby Jones, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Lucy Boynton, and — in a couple of scenery-chewing appearances as an occult scholar — Robert Duvall.
Ahead of its release, Cooper and Melling sat down with The Playlist to discuss conjuring Edgar Allan Poe and the world of West Point, as well as their experiences collaborating with Bale.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
In researching Edgar Allan Poe, what’s an element of his life that you knew upon learning about it would have to feature in this story and its depiction of him?
Scott Cooper: I’ll speak to that as someone who grew up in Virginia and spent my formative years there, in the same place in which Poe spent his time after he was adopted by John Allan and brought to Richmond. We’re all entrenched to think of Poe as someone who is obsessed with the Satanic and the occult, with paranoia and anxiety, as someone who’s the writer of the macabre and essentially bequeathed to us gothic horror and detective fiction. But I think what I most wanted to express, and what I was happy to understand in my research, was that Poe was not like that in his formative years at West Point. In fact, he was warm and witty and humorous, prone to poetic and romantic musings, but also someone who was rather ruthless, as an orphan I suspect would be. I was interested to show a side of Edgar Allan Poe most Americans didn’t know existed. And I have to say, I think Harry Melling has brought him to life in ways that most anyone will admire. I can’t imagine another actor who could have played him like this.
Harry Melling: Thanks, Scott. That’s so lovely. For me, one of the great opportunities in getting to play Poe was the opportunity to reinvent this idea of who we think he is. Certainly, in Scott’s script, we are greeted with someone who is perhaps more charming, wittier, more foolish than you might think of when you say the name “Edgar Allan Poe.” And so, rather than being daunted by playing the icon of him, I thought I needed to do all this research, to work out what things were and weren’t useful, what things I could draw off, and what things I couldn’t run with.
He did obviously go to West Point in the 1830s. One of the things that I found really interesting was the fact that he spent a year there and joined West Point because he wanted to write. He thought, “This is a great place to write. I’ll have some time to sit down and get scribbling.” That was ridiculous. That was a stupid, stupid notion. He had no time. He was just in classes and out on the field, doing drills. And so he didn’t write at all. And he got himself kicked out by smuggling alcohol into the barracks because he’d had enough. And I thought that was such an interesting insight into this chaotic, charming, foolish, smart creature. And that was really useful in terms of understanding the many qualities that Scott has written in this version of Poe.
Scott, one element of your films I always admire is how rich their atmospheres feel. You uncover a level of emotional desolation in these iconic American settings. How did you want to approach establishing the world of West Point, which evokes the Gothic qualities of Poe’s writing?
Cooper: Well, I’ve spent a lot of time in the Hudson Valley, so I know that landscape quite well. I’ve spent some time at West Point, though West Point in 1830 does not look like West Point today. It was much smaller, more intimate. As a filmmaker, my character’s surroundings tell me as much about them as the character itself. And so one of the reasons that I like period films is that I’m able to painstakingly recreate an era, hopefully without falling into nostalgic overload, which often happens when I watch period films. Production design, costume design, and the accent work is all pushed to the fore. For me, that obscures character and story and doesn’t allow me to quite connect with the characters on an emotional or psychological level.
The challenge is, here, we’re of course creating a Gothic world. We happened to shoot in an inhospitable location, where the temperature was at times 4-8° below zero. But Harry, Christian Bale, and my remarkable crew all were there in service of helping to painstakingly recreate Poe’s Gothic world, in a way that I hope is undeniable. Because we are also influenced by our atmosphere and our landscape, the environs we inhabit, one can’t help but think that it was this kind of landscape, and all of the events that take place in this narrative, that influenced Poe to become the writer he became. And now Harry will tell us what it’s like to shoot in -4° and -8°F.
Melling: [laughing] In every single frame, you get a sense of the harshness, the brutality of what these characters must have been living through in the 1830s. In terms of acting in it, I personally kind of loved it. The fear is, “Is my mouth gonna move?” That was the main concern. “Am I going to be able to say these words?” And Edgar had some words to say. But this was true throughout the entire shooting of this film: everything was there. The reality of this situation for these characters was all there, in details of the costumes and the set, in the weather. There was something harsh. To be confronted with that as an actor was extremely useful because you are engaging directly with what these people would have been going through. It made my job easier, in a sense.
The interview continues on the next page.