Scott Cooper's The Pale Blue Eye is a visually striking and methodically paced murder mystery that takes viewers on a haunting adventure brimming with satisfying twists and turns. Adapted from the book of the same name by Louis Bayard, it's the sixth film directed by Cooper, who began his career with the exceptional 2009 music drama Crazy Heart and continued to offer up compelling stories in Out of the Furnace, Hostiles, and Antlers. The Pale Blue Eye also marks Cooper's third collaboration with Christian Bale, for whom the lead character of detective Augustus Landor was written.
Set at West Point in 1830, The Pale Blue Eye also features a surprising secondary protagonist in a young Edgar Allan Poe, played to perfection by Harry Melling (The Tragedy of Macbeth). This is a different Poe than may be expected by fans of the legendary author's work, and the grim nature of The Pale Blue Eye suggests the events of the film's story had an effect on the character. Together, Bale's Landor and Melling's Poe must work together to discover the identity of a killer who has taken the life—and removed the heart—of a West Point cadet.
Scott Cooper spoke with Screen Rant about discovering Louis Bayard's novel, working with Christian Bale on The Pale Blue Eye, creating the perfect Poe, and more.
Scott Cooper on The Pale Blue Eye
Screen Rant: This film is adapted from Louis Bayard's novel. How did you come across the story in the first place?
Scott Cooper: After I finished Crazy Heart, my father, who taught literature and English, introduced the book to me. Much like Poe, I spent my formative years in Virginia. I was born there, [and] Poe moved there when he was three with John Allan, his benefactor. My father said, "I've read the most ingenious book, where the author Louis Bayard has placed Edgar Allan Poe, a young Poe, at the center of a detective story." Of course, Poe bequeathed to us detective fiction and horror fiction. I read it for pleasure, and I said, "Wow, this actually could make for a really interesting film." That's how The Pale Blue Eye made its way to me: my father.
Right after Crazy Heart, which was over ten years ago.
Scott Cooper: That's right. I was just making a film with Christian Bale called Out of the Furnace; [it was] my first collaboration with Christian. I shared my screenplay with him, which he loved. We felt he was probably too young to play Augustus Landor at that point, and too old to play Poe, so we waited. I continued to work on the script, I tailored it for him, and then last year, we said, "Hey, what about making The Pale Blue Eye now?" And off we went.
You were just waiting for him?
Scott Cooper: Yeah. We went and made Hostiles, and I made Black Mass and Antlers, and then this is my third film with Christian.
That is amazing. How did the performance that he ended up giving compare to what was in your head as you were going along?
Scott Cooper: It exceeded it. Christian is not only my closest collaborator, he's my closest pal, I write specifically for him. There are many things about him that I admire, and I know what he's going to bring to a character, but very often he surprises me and brings something so much more interesting than I have conceived on the page.
But [also], life has intervened in those last ten or twelve years, and Christian brings life experience and all of his work as an actor since he was 12 years old into each part. He's made it a richer, more interesting character than I think I would have conceived ten or twelve years before. And then it allowed me to cast Harry Melling as a young Poe as well.
Harry Melling is so good in this. He's really fantastic.
Scott Cooper: He's really the only person I can imagine playing this part, and I had only seen him once before. In the Coen brothers' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, he played this limbless performer that Liam Neeson was carrying around American west, espousing Shakespeare and poetry, and I thought to myself, "My God, that's my Edgar Allan Poe." Christian watched it, [and] he agreed. I sent Harry the screenplay, he so graciously put himself on tape, and his audition blew us away. Christian said, "Why look any further?" Here was our Poe.
Was there something that was most important to you in portraying Edgar Allan Poe at this time in his life?
Scott Cooper: Well, it really was portraying who Poe was at this stage in his life. We know Poe, collectively, as the master of the macabre; a man who writes about tragedy, and death, and despair, and grief. We have entrenched firmly in our consciousness who Edgar Allan Poe is, but the Poe that we're presenting is warm, and witty, and humorous, and prone to poetic and romantic musing. Someone who was an orphan, [who] is looking for connection, and he finds that in Christian Bale's world-weary detective.
It was really about portraying Poe as all of my research led me to believe that he was, and that the events in this story, [like] an Edgar Allan Poe origin story, motivated him to become the writer that we all know and love.
I think a really good example of that is the moment in this movie where Poe says a limerick. Did you write the limerick itself?
Scott Cooper: It comes from a limerick that was around at that era. I thought that it would bring some humor, some cheeky humor, to [what is] kind of a morbid film, but I cannot take credit for it.
I think with any mystery movie, it's common for people to go back and see if there are any clues they missed the first time. Is that something that you're conscious of, and did you make an effort to put things in that would be rewarding on a second viewing?
Scott Cooper: Yes. I do believe that my films get richer upon repeated viewings, whether it's Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace, or Hostiles. This is no exception, and maybe more so here, because I have laid all the breadcrumbs for a repeated viewing for the intrepid to say, "A-ha! I could have seen it all along."
And there are some people who will spot it upon a first viewing, but because this is a whodunit, I thought it would be a great challenge and a lot of fun to leave a trail of clues for someone who deigns to see it a second time.
I also really love the look of this film. It's very bleak and dark the whole way through. Was that difficult to maintain, or was shooting in those conditions a hassle?
Scott Cooper: It was incredibly difficult to shoot this film. [We shot in a] quite unforgiving and brutal landscape that was not easily accessible. Temperatures were four below, eight below zero for long stretches when you're outside, but it all really lent itself to Poe's evocative and macabre aesthetic.
The film just wouldn't feel the same if it were shot in any other season but winter, where the leaves from the trees have been denuded. You get the architecture of the branches, you get a really incredibly lovely, but brutal, unforgiving landscape because we're all affected by our environments. It really speaks Poe's aesthetic. My cinematographer, my production designer, and my costume designer, we wanted to have a very controlled palette. One that almost felt like it was in black and white, it was so stark. It was all very deliberate.
It's really beautiful. I also wanted to ask you about the dialogue. It's period, but even within the period Poe naturally speaks with a lot of flourishes. Was it a challenge at all to nail the tone of the dialogue, and did you need to do a lot of research?
Scott Cooper: It was quite a challenge, because America was still in its infancy in 1830. Of course, the English influence was quite pervasive; it wasn't American English. People were much more verbose than they are today. Most of my films don't have a lot of dialogue, and they're told quite visually, but this is a dialogue- and plot-driven film because it is a whodunit and a murder mystery. I also had a lot of fun writing dialogue for these characters because they were at times theatrical, [with] a bit more flourish than most of the very lean dialogue in my films.
This was all in service of Edgar Allan Poe, who is one of my favorite writers, in trying to evoke what he might have written, or would go on to write. I would read a lot of Dickens at the time, just to get a sense, and would rewrite some of his passages. That helped send me on my way. And, of course, Louis Bayard's wonderful novel.
And finally, do you have a favorite work of Edgar Allan Poe's, or something you turned to the most while making this film?
Scott Cooper: One of my favorite works of Poe's is called The Premature Burial. It was first published, I think, in 1844. The narrator has an obsessive fear and horrible nightmares that he will be buried alive while comatose. That's something that people of that era feared quite openly. Fears of being entombed before one's time plagued Poe's thoughts, and a lot of people. It's one of my favorites.
About The Pale Blue Eye
West Point, 1830. In the early hours of a gray winter morning, a cadet is found dead. But after the body arrives at the morgue, tragedy becomes savagery when it’s discovered that the young man’s heart has been skillfully removed. Fearing irreparable damage to the fledgling military academy, its leaders turn to a local detective, Augustus Landor (Christian Bale), to solve the murder. Stymied by the cadets’ code of silence, Landor enlists the help of one of their own to pursue the case, an eccentric cadet with a disdain for the rigors of the military and a penchant for poetry — a young man named Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling).
Check out our other interviews with the cast of The Pale Blue Eye as well.
The Pale Blue Eye is currently playing in select theaters and will be available on Netflix on January 6.