Netflix kicked off 2023 by dropping an exhilarating mystery-drama with a star-studded forged — “The Pale Blue Eye,” starring Christian Bale (“The Dark Knight,” “American Psycho”), Lucy Boynton (“Bohemian Rhapsody”), and Gillian Anderson (“The Crown,” “Sex Education”). The movie follows 1830s detective Augustus Landor (Bale) as he groups up with Edgar Allen Poe (Harry Melling) to resolve a sequence of murders in West Point, NY.
While “The Pale Blue Eye” contains American detective novelist and poet Edgar Allen Poe as a personality, it’s not based mostly on a real story. The homicide thriller, nevertheless, does embody ties to real-life occasions that occurred within the American literary genius’s life. Read on to seek out out which true information had been included within the streamer’s movie adaptation of Louis Bayard’s novel by the identical title.
What Is True About Edgar Allen Poe in “The Pale Blue Eye”?
In the movie, tenured detective Landor is enlisted to analyze murders on the United States Military Academy at West Point. Landor accepts assist from one of many enrolled navy cadets, Poe, who’s keen to assist out with the case. The actual Poe really did enlist in the US Army in 1827 below the alias “Edgar A. Perry” at age 18. While he transferred between Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Virginia early in his Army profession, he finally enrolled at West Point in March 1830 at age 21. He stop in January 1831 and was formally dismissed that March.
Director Scott Cooper defined to Tudum, “Of course, it is a work of fiction, though Poe was at West Point.”
Although Poe did attend the Academy featured within the thriller, the creator’s enrollment at West Point is the place the true information finish. In movie manufacturing notes obtained by Decider, Cooper shared, “Though Poe was solely at West Point for seven months (earlier than getting kicked out), no murders befell there that I’m conscious of.”
What Else Inspired “The Pale Blue Eye”?
“The Pale Blue Eye” was closely impressed by Cooper’s enjoyment of Poe’s work. In an interview with Tudum, the Virginia-born director famous that he has his father to thank for his curiosity in Poe. “Because my father taught English and there was plenty of literature strewn about our home, Poe got here into my world at a younger age, and I used to be simply fascinated together with his works.”
Cooper accredits that fascination with how Poe impressed the movie. “What I’m saying is that it is these occasions that happen in our movie that formed [Poe’s] worldview and helped him turn into the author that he turned,” Cooper informed Tudum. “With the recurring themes that take care of the questions of loss of life and the consequences of decomposition and reanimation of the useless and mourning; all these are thought-about a part of his darkish romanticism.”
Similar to Cooper, Bale had a deep and life-long appreciation for Poe. “Watching TV in England after I was rising up, [I’d see] movies that I did not know had been Edgar Allan Poe [adaptations],” Bale defined to The Los Angeles Times. “When I began to take a look at his work with extra intention, it was a shock [to discover] how a lot he has infiltrated tradition and my mind with out me even realizing that it was him doing so. I like ‘The Murders within the Rue Morgue,’ ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt’ and ‘The Raven.'”
Stream “The Pale Blue Eye” on Netflix now.
