'The Tell-Tale Heart'

“The Pale Blue Eye” — just thinking of this movie brings tears to my eyes and not in a good way. Seriously, after fnishing this movie I sat in silence, crying about the 2 hours and 10 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

“The Pale Blue Eye” is a flm adaptation of a novel written under the same name. The flm centers around detective Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) and cadet Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling) on their journey to solve a series of strange murders. However, this “journey” is closer to the feeling of leisurely getting ready for school before realizing that you are actually twenty minutes late to class.

The character development, to put it kindly, was not the best. I knew nothing nor was I interested in knowing anything about a single one of these characters, I couldn’t even distinguish one character from another and I felt no empathy towards any character in this movie. Sure, I may have had moments of compassion, but never a true empathetic connection as one would normally have with any intricately-made, complex character.

So, let's start out with the one enjoyable character in this movie (or as enjoyable as a character can be in this movie), Edgar Allan Poe. The portrayal and casting of Poe was truly spot on. Melling fts this role. He made some incredibly dull scenes about fve times brighter.

Towards the beginning of the movie, when sightings of Poe were rare, I felt

by Scarlett Mische

bored and on the verge of sleep. The cool tones associated with other characters were terribly drab, and I wasn’t able to focus on the movie at all; once Poe entered with the warm-toned setting that I’ve come to think of when thinking of him, my attention was immediately redrawn to the scene. The joy in having Melling on screen was that I never knew quite what to expect and that was particularly gratifying, considering how predictable everything else in this movie was.

Unfortunately, the main character of this movie, Augustus Landor, was not quite as fun to have on screen as Poe. Now, I’m going to frst and foremost address that I do not like Christian Bale, nor do I understand why people fnd him to be such a phenomenal actor. Maybe this aversion comes from his portrayal of Batman and my dislike for comic-movie inaccuracies; however, one will never truly know why I loathe Christian Bale. Yet, even while keeping my bias aside as best as possible, I still could not see a “spectacular, astounding Academy Award winner” while watching Bale’s portrayal of detective Landor. He lacked personality. There was no distinctive feature about him. He was bleak, and as the movie title suggests, “pale” throughout the entire movie with no shades deeper than a ghostly blue. It may be due to the fact that I haven’t read the novel which would lead me to feel so dissatisfed with his character, but I feel that this might not be the case. After researching this movie a bit more, I thought, ‘Perhaps, this is not Bale’s fault, but rather, the director’s.’ But, before deciding that director Scott Cooper was the demise of this movie, I realized that maybe it was the scriptwriter who truly fumbled the bag. Can you guess who the script writer is? No?

It’s Scott Cooper. That’s right, Cooper not only gave way for the terrible and bland conversational chemistry between main actors, but he was also in charge of the utterly brittle and pointless words that were spoken between the characters. This is ironic, considering that Cooper was originally an actor who turned to movie directing with the hopes of writing compelling scripts, and that goal has defnitely not been achieved.

I don’t have much else to say on the matter of Scott Cooper other than that he destroyed what I have heard to be a decent book. What I do have to say is that the hour and a half I waited for there to be any kind of actual plot was not worth it.

I wish that I could spread out the action in this movie, so that it isn't all stuck at the end. Anything is better than listening to a couple of rudimentary characters droning on and on about nothingness for most of the movie. When the plot twists started to happen, I actually had the smallest sliver of hope for this movie; however, the movie abruptly stopped. This also abruptly stopped any pretense I had that this flm might be okay.

Overall, this movie was bleak and lacked foundation. I felt like everything was slow and yet the ending was rushed. At the very least, this movie truly lived up to its name, as it was immensely “pale” and the cool tones of “blue” were constantly hurting my eyes.