geezer cinema: the pale blue eye (scott cooper, 2022)

The Pale Blue Eye is a whodunit with a catch: one of the main characters is Edgar Allan Poe. That's not quite as big a deal as it might seem. You could enjoy the movie without knowing anything about Poe. But it adds something for people inclined to favor such tricks.

The plot has twists and turns, of course, but writer/director Scott Cooper takes us mostly down a straightforward path. The film is a bit slow-moving, but the whodunit angle is engrossing ... it's never boring. Christian Bale is fine in a low-key way, the supporting cast is filled with memorable people like Toby Jones and Gillian Anderson and Robert Duvall and Charlotte Gainsbourg. The look of the film is perfect (Masanobu Takayanagi is the cinematographer). You get cold just watching the chilly scenes of winter, and the visuals get dark at appropriate moments.

But then there's Harry Melling as Poe. I've seen him in several movies without being able to recall him exactly in any of them. I won't soon forget his Poe, however. Put simple, Poe is downright creepy, which is a problem in that I was never sure if the creepiness was purposeful on the part of Melling and Cooper, or if Melling was just over-using his own blue eyes. I suspect many will find it an award-winning performance, but I was distracted every time Melling appeared, which was a lot ... he was playing Edgar Allan Poe, after all.