"The Pale Blue Eye" Looks Past its Central Character
New Netflix mystery film is intriguing but fails to properly spotlight Edgar Allan Poe.
By Saya Fujii
New Netflix mystery film is intriguing but fails to properly spotlight Edgar Allan Poe.
By Saya Fujii
When a murder mystery takes place in the 1800s, involves a famous poet and is a period drama, it makes you wonder what direction the film will take. Fortunately, that question is answered quite early on, but unsurprisingly, it doesn't do the best job at balancing it well.
“The Pale Blue Eye” is a Netflix film adapted from the 2003 novel centered on a detective named Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) who works with Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling) to solve the mystery of a man whose heart was carved out post-mortem. The story follows the relationship between Landor and Poe, while giving us glimpses of their pasts as they unfold the plot.
The cast displays a few familiar faces; Bale, Melling, Gillian Anderson and Toby Jones. These are actors that seem well suited for an 1800s drama like this one and I was not disappointed with how well they fit into their roles. Out of the whole cast, I was most looking forward to Anderson’s role because I wouldn’t expect her to play a character like Julia Marquis. Unfortunately, I was let down by the little screen time she had, because I had to wait an hour for her to appear and I was expecting a bigger role. Still, Anderson gave an entertaining and convincing performance as the wealthy and pretentious Julia Marquis. It was clear she enjoyed playing the part and at times her enjoyable albeit annoying character was quite funny. Bale was unsurprisingly impressive throughout the film where we follow his character, Landor as he continues to unravel the plot and his backstory. He effectively supports his character with his performance as a man dealing with past tragedy while finding comfort in a new friend. Melling is an actor that I have seen pop up in a few other projects after the “Harry Potter” movies and his role here as the famous Poe should be lauded. My only gripe is that his American accent as a British actor isn’t the most convincing and a lot of the time his words just sound odd.
In a film like this where the characters in the spotlight are limited, it is important that those characters are expanded on and fleshed out well. However, by the time the ending rolls around, there is still quite little we have learned about the ensemble, even the famous Edgar Allan Poe whom the movie tried to center on. I think the reason for this is because the plot needed to keep moving and adding time to studying the characters wouldn’t move the story forward and instead would add boredom. An easy fix for this would be if they chose one aspect to focus on; Edgar Allan Poe and his relationship with Landor, or the murder mystery plot. The film attempted to do both and made the addition of Poe rather pointless except for his skills in uncovering writing. If the story was more about the characters, we could have learned more about the interesting Marquis family and Poe himself.
The “Pale Blue Eye” was an enjoyable watch that made me appreciate the 1800s atmosphere, and kept me interested through the end with its twists. Unfortunately, the real mystery is why this movie centered on Poe somehow left me with more questions about him than when I started.
“The Pale Blue Eye” is now streaming on Netflix.
“The Pale Blue Eye” is a Netflix film adapted from the 2003 novel centered on a detective named Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) who works with Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling) to solve the mystery of a man whose heart was carved out post-mortem. The story follows the relationship between Landor and Poe, while giving us glimpses of their pasts as they unfold the plot.
The cast displays a few familiar faces; Bale, Melling, Gillian Anderson and Toby Jones. These are actors that seem well suited for an 1800s drama like this one and I was not disappointed with how well they fit into their roles. Out of the whole cast, I was most looking forward to Anderson’s role because I wouldn’t expect her to play a character like Julia Marquis. Unfortunately, I was let down by the little screen time she had, because I had to wait an hour for her to appear and I was expecting a bigger role. Still, Anderson gave an entertaining and convincing performance as the wealthy and pretentious Julia Marquis. It was clear she enjoyed playing the part and at times her enjoyable albeit annoying character was quite funny. Bale was unsurprisingly impressive throughout the film where we follow his character, Landor as he continues to unravel the plot and his backstory. He effectively supports his character with his performance as a man dealing with past tragedy while finding comfort in a new friend. Melling is an actor that I have seen pop up in a few other projects after the “Harry Potter” movies and his role here as the famous Poe should be lauded. My only gripe is that his American accent as a British actor isn’t the most convincing and a lot of the time his words just sound odd.
In a film like this where the characters in the spotlight are limited, it is important that those characters are expanded on and fleshed out well. However, by the time the ending rolls around, there is still quite little we have learned about the ensemble, even the famous Edgar Allan Poe whom the movie tried to center on. I think the reason for this is because the plot needed to keep moving and adding time to studying the characters wouldn’t move the story forward and instead would add boredom. An easy fix for this would be if they chose one aspect to focus on; Edgar Allan Poe and his relationship with Landor, or the murder mystery plot. The film attempted to do both and made the addition of Poe rather pointless except for his skills in uncovering writing. If the story was more about the characters, we could have learned more about the interesting Marquis family and Poe himself.
The “Pale Blue Eye” was an enjoyable watch that made me appreciate the 1800s atmosphere, and kept me interested through the end with its twists. Unfortunately, the real mystery is why this movie centered on Poe somehow left me with more questions about him than when I started.
“The Pale Blue Eye” is now streaming on Netflix.