POE FACED (THE PALE BLUE EYE)

© Netflix

Now here's a funny thing at the start of 2023.

How do you dethrone a whodunnit featuring an English actor with a ridiculous US accent from being Netflix's top film?

Replace it with another whodunnit featuring more English actors sporting ridiculous US accents, of course!

In recent days, Scott Cooper's 'The Pale Blue Eye' has knocked Rian Johnson's 'Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery' from the Number One slot on the streaming service's film charts in several territories.

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And it's not hard to understand why.

The film stars Christian Bale who audiences know often turns in compelling lead performances.

It features a top notch cast of character actors too that includes Harry Melling, Toby Jones, Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, Timothy Spall, Simon McBurney and the great Robert Duvall.

Cooper's film also curiously mixes Gothic horror, a Western and a detective mystery.

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It also boasts many twists and turns like a good whodunnit should. 

Adapted for the screen by the director from Louis Bayard's 2003  novel, the movie is exquisitely shot by the Japanese cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi.

Cooper's film also boasts sumptuous costumes by Kasia Walicka-Maimone and intricately designed 19th Century sets by production designer Stefania Cella, art director Troy Sizemore and set directors Gretchen Gattuso and Jane Madden.

So why does Cooper's wintry tale leave me cold?

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Bale plays Augustus Landor, a celebrated detective who has gone into retirement following the death of his daughter, Hadley Robinson's Mattie.

Still haunted by her tragic death, Landor is an alcoholic and is living a reclusive life in a cabin.

He is stirred out of retirement, though, following a visit by Simon McBurney's Captain Hitchcock from West Point Military Academy.

Surprised to see Hitchcock, the Captain explains that Augustus's presence has been requested by Timothy Spall's Superintendent Thayer and that he really has little option but to accompany him.

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Thayer and Hitchcock reveal at West Point that the military top brass are alarmed by the apparent hanging of one of these students, Steven Maier's Cadet Fry whose heart has been removed from his body.

Examining Fry's corpse in the morgue with Toby Jones' Dr Daniel Marquis, Augustus discovers a small fragment of paper which the cadet was clutching with some distinctive writing on it - even if the words aren't clear.

Marks on Fry's fingers and neck also indicate he was murdered before he was apparently hung from a tree.

Rather oddly, though, his feet were touching the ground when the body was discovered.

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As he makes his initial enquiries in the academy about Fry, Landor comes across Harry Melling's gregarious, eccentric poet Edgar Allan Poe who is a cadet and also seems to have an interest in murder mysteries.

Noting Poe's interest in the case, he engages him as a co-investigator, giving him the task of picking up any useful gossip among his fellow cadets that might point to other possible lines of enquiry.

The fragment of paper and the mutilation of sheep and cow carcasses leads Augustus and Edgar to suspect Occult involvement.

This leads them to the door of Robert Duvall's Occult expert Jean Pepe.

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But when another recruit, Fred Hechinger's Cadet Randolph Ballinger goes missing and is discovered hanging with his heart and genitals removed, it unnerves the academy's top brass.

Thayer and Hitchcock become very concerned at the slow progress Landor seems to be making and start to demand results.

Poe also falls onto their radar as a possible suspect, given that both dead men had had fallings out with him in West Point.

The writer, meanwhile, has become enchanted by Lucy Boynton's frail beauty Lea Marquis, the daughter of Dr Marquis and Gillian Anderson's haughty Julia.

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She is also the sister of fellow Cadet Artemis Marquis, played by Harry Lawtey, who fellow trainees note has expressed an interest in the Occult.

So, there you go.

All of these ingredients should make for a satisfying Gothic horror murder mystery brew.

So why is Cooper's film so underwhelming?

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For starters, like a lot of films these days, 'The Pale Blue Eye' feels about a half an hour too long - slowly trudging its way through the plot and testing its audience's patience as the cast crunches through cumbersome dialogue.

A lot of the performances are also too mannered - with Melling, Spall, Boynton, McBurney and Anderson, in particular, the guilty parties

The US accents they sport sometimes border on the ridiculous and you find yourself wondering why is a largely English cast landing these parts over American actors?

Are US actors really that weak that they cannot carry off the lead roles in an American period drama (with the exception of Anderson and Duvall)?

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Even if you leave those questions to the side, how can Cooper's cast get away with mangling US vowel sounds in a project like this?

Some may argue Daniel Craig does exactly that in the 'Knives Out' films with an accent that is undoubtedly preposterous.

However he gets away with it because the tone of Rian Johnson's films is quite skittish.

By way of contrast, 'The Pale Blue Eye' takes itself far too seriously.

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It is a sombre and ponderous film and, as a result, the accents jar.

The casting of Bale, Jones and Duvall, while unquestionably welcome, creates another strange tension, resulting in a clash of acting styles with the rest of the cast.

Bale delivers a typically intense Method style performance, mumbling and occasionally shouting his way through Cooper's movie.

Meanwhile Melling conjures up a florid, over pronounced depiction of Edgar Allan Poe and this creates an odd dynamic.

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In the end, Bale's brooding intensity and physicality wins - delivering the more intriguing performance.

Jones and Duvall arguably deliver the most subtle performances in the movie - quietly going about their business and stealing scenes, safe in the knowledge that the Devil is in the detail and the camera will always pick it up.

Undoubtedly the biggest weakness of all is Cooper's script which often feels really overcooked.

Some of the lines are just tailor made for ham acting.

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"We have been specifically charged with the care of these young men to make them gentlemen and soldiers and, to that end, we drive them," Thayer pompously tells Landor with a rigid facial expression that looks like he is sucking a lemon.

"But we'd like to think we know when to stop driving them."

Or what about this?

Expressing in a candlelit tavern his interest in the strange circumstances of Fry's death, Poe grandiosely declares: "Well, the heart is a symbol or it is nothing.

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"Now take away the symbol and what do you have? It's a fistful of muscle of no more aesthetic interest than a bladder.

"Now to remove a man's heart is to traffic in symbol and who better equipped for such labour than a poet?"

And then there's this gem from Lea Marquis to Pie: "How well it sits on you, this morbidity. It suits you better than your uniform."

Having not read the source novel, it's possible these lines may be in Bayard's book.

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But even if they are, they still sound really stiff and hammy on the screen.

As grating as they are, we're not talking about ear scraping dialogue.

And for all its many flaws, Cooper's film is a real visual feast.

It's just a pity the tone of Cooper's moves seems a bit too po-faced.

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A bit of tongue in cheek, self deprecating humour wouldn't have gone amiss.

That's why 'Glass Onion' succeeds while 'The Pale Blue Eye' stumbles.

Melling, Anderson, Spall etc. might otherwise have gotten away with performances that stray into the territory of Tennessee Williams rather than Poe.

And audiences might have found Cooper's movie less of a chore.

('The Pale Blue Eye' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on December 23, 2022 and made available for streaming on Netflix on January 6, 2023)