Christian Bale and Harry Melling are pretty terrific in Scott Cooper’s 'The Pale Blue Eye.' BilgeEbiri writes
The Pale Blue Eye.The barren trees and snowy ridges of the Hudson Valley in winter have rarely looked as forbidding as they do in Scott Cooper’s, a mystery that’s more about mood than ingenuity. But the chill you feel in your bones may actually enhance the suspense; Cooper clearly understands that mysteries live or die on their atmosphere.
This father-son dynamic powers the whole picture and sets up several key moments in the film’s climax. That, in turn, asks a lot of Melling, and you never quite know where he’s going with his wonderful Poe. Cavernous eyes dominating a face that’s otherwise all cheekbone and chin, he brings to this outsider a fey, haunted confidence. He alternates between swells of sadness and grandiosity, the mark of an honest-to-goodness Romantic.
Ultimately, it’s all pretty gripping, not just because of Bale and Melling and the heady atmosphere but because the crimes being investigated are savage on a downright existential level. The murders are monstrous enough to capture the imagination, and Cooper makes sure to prod us along by dwelling on the pasty, swollen corpses; the grotesque, coagulated wounds; the fingers stiff with rigor mortis being cracked on autopsy tables.
This also sets up a challenge for the movie: how to deliver a solution that not only makes sense but also honors the captivating cruelty of the crimes committed. And amazingly, the film’s finale is a genuine hoot — totally unexpected yet expertly sold through the clever deployment of information. Unlike a lot of mysteries that are designed to be unsolvable by an audience ,shows us everything we need to figure it all out and still manages to pull the rug out from under us.
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