The Pale Blue Eye

John Fetterman officially became the 54th senator in Pennsylvania history this week. But courtesy of Netflix, he can add another job to his resume: Actor.

[ made a cameo in 2005′s Wedding Crashers](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/john-mccain-dead-5-memorable-cameos-tv-shows-movies-1137309/saturday-night-live-2002/). [as Fetterman tweeted last month](https://twitter.com/JohnFetterman/status/1601282214226165760), his wife Gisele also makes a cameo in The Pale Blue Eye. ... That’s a face that fits in the 1830s.’” She is possibly in the background of one scene in the same tavern about 45 minutes after Fetterman appears, though if it’s her, the background is too out of focus to conclusively tell. After all, looking for a senator in the film already broke the fourth wall plenty for us. We clocked him in one scene early in the film, when Bale’s character goes to a tavern after starting his murder investigation.

Movie review: Christian Bale and Harry Melling star in the new atmospheric Netflix mystery The Pale Blue Eye. Veteran detective Augustus Landor and young ...

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. 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. (Is he the only American in the cast? Robert Duvall (!!!) plays a professor of the occult. We’re dealing with a fundamentally cozy genre, however, and familiarity is allowed and encouraged. (In real life, Poe lasted only a few months at the school.) You also sense, in his mannerisms and speech, that this is a man who will either make his mark on the world or end up dead in a ditch. When Poe visits Landor’s house and admires books that were clearly his daughter’s, we start to understand why the older man has softened around this misfit poet-cadet: The young man reminds him of his lost daughter. This father-son dynamic powers the whole picture and sets up several key moments in the film’s climax. “To remove a man’s heart is to traffic in symbol. Those of us for whom Sherlock Holmes served as a gateway drug into serious literature can testify to this: The Victoriana, the cobblestones and gaslight, all were just as essential as the cases themselves to our fascination, maybe more so. Landor has lost his wife to illness, and his daughter, we’re told, recently ran away from home; he came to these woods to find happiness with his family and wound up alone and embittered. “The heart is a symbol, or it is nothing,” Poe explains.

How do Landor and Poe solve the mystery? ( ...

After learning of Ballinger’s involvement from Fry’s diary, Landor killed and mutilated him in the same way to make the murders appear ritualistic. Landor confesses that his daughter, Mattie (Hadley Robinson), didn’t actually run away, but was raped by three assailants on her way home from the academy ball two years earlier and later jumped off a cliff to her death. Lea drugs Poe and, with the help of Artemus and their mother Julia (Gillian Anderson), prepares to cut out his heart and sacrifice him. After finding an officer’s jacket that links Artemus to the scene of Fry’s heart abduction, Landor works out that the Marquis family attempted an occult ritual involving the sacrifice of a human heart to try to prolong Lea’s life—and it worked. “I knew that from the moment I first met you, and here we are.” Mattie came away from the assault holding Fry’s dog tag, leading Landor to seek revenge on Fry following her suicide. Landor manages to pull Poe and Julia to safety, but Lea and Artemus are crushed and killed by falling debris. The diary reveals that Fry and Ballinger were close friends, and, soon after, it’s discovered that their other friend, Cadet Stoddard (Joey Brooks), appears to have run off. The cadet, Leroy Fry (Steven Meier), was hanged and, in an even more disturbing turn of events, had his heart cut out and stolen while his body sat inside the school’s hospital. While The Pale Blue Eye is a work of fiction, the real-life Poe did in fact attend West Point before being Lea suffers from a seizure disorder and has been given only a few months to live. And it’s a doozy of a whodunnit.

When a West Point cadet is discovered dead in 1830 and his heart is later carved out of his chest, military leaders of the academy ask Detective Augustus Landor ...

Landor not only killed Fry, but he was summoned to West Point to solve the mystery he created. Poe has all the information he needs to turn Landor in. He left Poe with the note from Fry’s hand (which was assumed to be from Lea). But Poe noticed that the handwriting on the note matches a note that Landor once wrote to him. When Landor rushes in to stop them, Lea knocks over a candle, and fire overtakes the room. Seeing promise in one of the academy’s own, Landor enlists a young cadet for help: the poet Edgar Allan Poe (Henry Melling).

Augustus Landor is a fictional creation from Bayard's novel and now Cooper's movie. His last name comes from Poe's short story, “Landor's Cottage.” Originally ...

“The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” is the first murder mystery based on the details of a real crime. In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Dupin calls Vidocq “a good guesser.” In the first Sherlock Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet” (1887), Holmes similarly dismisses the French detective’s fictional adaptation. It is fun to imagine the writer similarly going along on the case as the unnamed narrator in the short stories. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is also the first “locked room” mystery. In the film The Pale Blue Eye, it is young Edgar who eagerly helps the eccentric but brilliant detective probing the academy murders. He has no professional stake in their solution, it is a favor to him to pass the time. Auguste Dupin is the master analyst in Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” which was published in three installments in Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion, beginning in late 1842, and “The Purloined Letter,” published in 1844. That generation of readers was among the first to be made to feel actively part of the reported happenings of the day. There is nothing in the room but two bags of gold coins, torn hair, and the blade, still covered in blood. The Edgars, the most prestigious award of the Mystery Writers of America, is named in his honor. A mother and daughter are found dead in the sealed space deemed to be the crime scene. His last name comes from Poe’s short story, “Landor’s Cottage.” Originally published in 1849, it is a descriptive work, without mystery or violence, that works as a contemplative rest stop for the retired detective’s dwelling in The Pale Blue Eye.

Christian Bale and Harry Melling make a formidable investigative team in this historical murder mystery. The cast features several familiar, talented faces, ...

Therefore, the script from David Magee (Oscar-nominated for “Life of Pi” and “Finding Neverland”) is somewhat toothless. And “The X-Files” star Gillian Anderson plays the loopy, enigmatic wife of Jones’ elitist character. This manipulative comedic approach undercuts moments of genuine pathos and hints at where the narrative is going. When he’s forced into retirement and a young family rents the house across from his, he’s utterly disturbed. Augustus discovers an unusual kinship with an odd cadet named Edgar Allan Poe (Melling, from “The Queen’s Gambit,” playing a fictionalized take on the famous American writer). In the early part of the Victorian period, an emotionally wounded detective and a peculiar West Point cadet surreptitiously combine forces to investigate a series of grisly murders with a possible supernatural connection.

The blockbuster star opens up to THR about his close collaborations with David O. Russell and Scott Cooper and being "stunned" by how many producer credits ...

“Christian reads all of my scripts whether he’s in them or not; he sees cuts of all of my movies whether he’s in them or not; so he acts as a producer whether he’s involved with the movie or not,” Cooper explained. I helped to put the films together, and mostly as a creative producer, a right-hand man, sort of a consigliere,” Bale continued. “I did it on Amsterdam and with this because I was there right from the inception. “It’s been really a great experience to have him also produce this film. 23 and starts streaming Friday on Netflix. But Bale is not one to sneak the credit into his contracts as some vanity gift. The film hit theaters on Dec. [Awards](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/e/awards/) [‘Babylon’ Star Diego Calva’s “Bizarre Kind of Summer Camp” Experience on Damien Chazelle’s Film](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/babylon-diego-calva-interview-damien-chazelle-1235291365/) [Heat Vision](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/e/heat-vision/) [‘M3GAN’ Star Allison Williams Talks Her Blumhouse Good Fortune and the Internal Debate Over M3GAN’s Viral Dance](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/m3gan-star-allison-williams-talks-her-blumhouse-good-fortune-and-the-internal-debate-over-m3gans-viral-dance-1235292567/) [Behind The Screen](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/e/behind-the-screen/) [How ‘Glass Onion’ Editor Bob Ducsay Placed Clues in Plain Sight So Audience “Didn’t Feel Cheated”](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/glass-onion-black-panther-wakanda-forever-editors-1235291376/) I wouldn’t want to do it if it’s not appropriate and I’m not putting in the work.” “I can be there to whisper in their ear, reminding them of how we put it together, what the intent was, etc. “Like everybody, I’m stunned sometimes at the amount of producers you see in the credits,” Bale explained to THR at the [recent premiere ](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/christian-bale-scott-cooper-the-pale-blue-eye-john-fetterman-1235282743/)of the Netflix film that he produced for filmmaker and frequent collaborator Scott Cooper.

Christian Bale's detective mission in The Pale Blue Eye creates a scary story that feels like the ideal horror narrative to break The Batman.

[The Pale Blue Eye is how the final act](https://www.cbr.com/review-netflix-the-pale-blue-eye-christian-bale/) reveals Landor is the actual killer, corrupting the case. More so, as vague as Landor's fate is, his Robin reminds the crusader that there's good in the world, in what is understandably a vicious, macabre dance that would have surely tested The Bat the same way. Credit must be given to Harry Melling as Poe too, as he brings an altruism to the role, creating a Poe who mirrors DC's Boy Wonder. The way they create a timeline, analyze letters, diaries and penmanship and solve cryptic puzzles creates a magnificent journey, reminding fans of Bale's talent and range, from Interestingly, as both tunnel down the case, director Scott Cooper charts the What makes the journey even more cerebral is that both Landor and Poe have their own past of grief and are desperate for answers and to feel whole again by solving the problem.

A detective partners with a young Edgar Allan Poe to solve a series of murders. Here's who stars in the Netflix thriller based on the 2003 novel.

[Little Women](https://screenrant.com/tag/little-women/). [Hamlet](https://screenrant.com/tag/hamlet/), [Peter "Wormtail" Pettigrew in five Harry Potter movies](https://screenrant.com/harry-potter-movies-books-peter-pettigrew-death-change-bad/), Beadle Bamford in [Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street](https://screenrant.com/tag/sweeney-todd/), J. [Murder on the Orient Express](https://screenrant.com/tag/murder-on-the-orient-express/), and Mary Austin in the Queen biopic [Bohemian Rhapsody](https://screenrant.com/tag/bohemian-rhapsody/). Turner, and Major Alistair Gregory in [Spencer](https://screenrant.com/tag/spencer). "Sonny" Dewey in The Apostle (1997), Jerry Facher in A Civil Action, and Judge Joseph Palmer in The Judge. [Dudley Dursley in five Harry Potter films](https://screenrant.com/dursleys-after-harry-potter-ending-dudley-vernon-petunia/). Gillian Anderson's notable film credits include The Mighty Celt, The Last King of Scotland, Shadow Dancer, Viceroy's House and the two X-Files feature films The X-Files: Fight the Future and [The X-Files: I Want to Believe](https://screenrant.com/xfiles-i-want-to-believe-movie-box-office-bomb-why/). Simon McBurney as Captain Hitchcock: A captain at the United States Military Academy who is the one that hires Augustus Landor. [Edgar Allen Poe](https://screenrant.com/hocus-pocus-sarah-come-little-children-song-edgar-allan-poe-theory/), who also happens to be an aspiring poet. Augustus Landor seeks Jean-Pepe's assistance when he begins to suspect that witchcraft and devil worship might be a motivating factor in the sacrificial nature of the murders. The Pale Blue Eye's plot is set in 1830, in West Point, New York, as a police detective teams with a young Edgar Allan Poe to solve a series of murders at the United States Military Academy. [The Pale Blue Eye](https://screenrant.com/tag/the-pale-blue-eye/).