The Pale Blue Eye

We really should be past the primitive cultural stage of fictionalizing/mythologizing historical figures by now. At the very least, the "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter" genre of stories needs to die... about several years before such idiocy was penned. So first I sneered at The Pale Blue Eye, then wondered what Christian Bale's been doing lately, then thought it looked low key enough not to infuriate me, and maybe an old-fashioned spooky gothic mystery would just about hit the spot, and oh hey, Agent Scully's in it! (And she acquits herself well!)

In fact, the acting in general might be the movie's high point. Florid at times, but then again much like The Crucible it depicts a time and place of florid mindsets. If you don't think Edgar Allan Poe would be that affected, well, historical records disagree, and by historical records I mean the man could go twenty pages on the topic of French draperies, and no, that's not a euphemism. Harry Melling (a.k.a. the stump from Buster Scruggs) (or Dudley Dursley, a name I was happy not to know until now) does an admirable job as the youthfully feisty version of Poe. I thought the performance a bit one-sided until realizing the other half, the bitter, hypercritical drunk, was reflected in the fictitious Landor. Having myself cited or alluded to Landor's Cottage twice or thrice here and always considered it one of Poe's underappreciated tales, an exemplary use of deliberate anticlimax, that character name itself earned my appreciation.

 

But the anticlimax here is not deliberate. Which is to say it's deliberate, but misconceived. Gradually, the second half loses steam. The social scenes drag. The florid drama veers into outright camp. And the denouement, though obviously intended to wring crocodile tears out of the audience, is by now so overused - the one greatest crime, the one unforgivable crime, the one crime which absolutely obsesses our society, the special kind of evil, and if you know which one I'm talking about, well, case-in-point - so overused as to reduce an otherwise workable period piece to a trite little public service announcement reiterated a hundred times a day by every Hollywood hack desperate for unquestioned moral high ground.

 

Pity. It could've been great.

 

Though, really, given Poe's real-life mode of parting with the military, maybe the pivotal denouncement scene an hour and ten minutes into things explains the movie's very existence. It certainly made the experience worthwhile.

 

To quote (and mildly spoil):

 

"I do believe that the Academy takes away a young man's will. It fences him with regulations and rules, deprives him of reason. It makes him less. human!"

"Are you implying the Academy is to blame for these deaths?"

"Someone connected to the Academy, yes, hence the Academy itself."

"Well, that's absurd. By your standard, every crime committed by a Christian will be a stain on Christ!"

"And so it is."

Ah, beautiful. For that scene, much is forgiven.