Less than a week into the new year and Netflix has already released an exciting new blockbuster, as The Pale Blue Eye dropped on the platform on Thursday (January 5). The period mystery-thriller takes viewers back to 1830s New York as a veteran detective is hired to solve a gruesome crime.
It stars Christian Bale as world-weary Augustus Landor, as he travels to West Point at the behest of a local military academy after a series of grisly murders. The body of a young cadet has had his heart skillfully removed, suggesting something sinister is afoot.
Finding his investigation hindered by the other cadets’ code of silence, Landor enlists the help of one of their own to pursue the case, an eccentric young man with a disdain for the rigors of the military – a young cadet named Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling).
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The iconic writer Poe is known as one of the worlds most influential literary figures, whose tales of the macabre have inspired countless authors and filmmakers since his death in 1849. So, if the film features a real-life figure, is the rest of the story true?
Is The Pale Blue Eye based on a true story?
The overwhelming majority of The Pale Blue Eye is entirely fictional, but it does have one element of truth to it. Edgar Allen Poe really was a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
He enrolled at the age of 21 in 1830, but was there for less than a year, finding he was not suited to military life before he purposefully got himself court martialed and moved to New York City in 1831 to pursue his career as a writer. Other than that, the film is an original story based on a 2003 book of the same name by American author Louis Bayard.
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Speaking to Netflix, the film’s writer-director Scott Cooper explained how he saw The Pale Blue Eye as a chance to create something of an origin story for young Allen Poe. He said: “Of course, this is a work of fiction.
“What I’m saying is: these events that occur in our film shaped his worldview and helped him become the writer he became –– with the recurring themes that deal with the questions of death, and the effects of decomposition and reanimation of the dead and mourning –– all those things that are considered part of his dark romanticism.”
The Pale Blue Eye is available to stream now on Netflix.
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