The Pale Blue Eye

Christian Bale anchors this stolid, darkly beautiful period crime procedural about a series of grisly murders at the pre-Civil War United States Military Academy.

A small subgenre that’s produced some surprisingly good films is what I’ll call the Period Crime Procedural. It’s a mystery/whodunit set in the distant past with a Sherlock Holmes type snooping into some horrendous crime (usually murder) that often comments upon modern societal ills. “The Name of the Rose” is one standout example.

“The Pale Blue Eye” isn’t on that level, but this grim, Gothic offering from Netflix is a stolid effort starring Christian Bale as an ex-police officer brought into investigate the grisly butchering of a cadet at the United States Military Academy circa 1830. It’s written and directed by Scott Cooper (“Crazy Heart”), who brings a moody, borderline nihilistic weight to the proceedings, based on the historical fiction novel by Louis Bayard (unread by me).

Bale plays Augustus Landor, a retired detective living near the academy, aka West Point. He has a reputation as a tireless investigator, but also a baleful alcoholic whose wife died a couple of years ago and his adult daughter run away from home. He’s brought in by the military leaders (Timothy Spall and Simon McBurney) to look into the matter of a cadet who was discovered hanged and with his heart cut out.

Needless to say, they’re relying on Landor as much for his discretion as his investigative powers. Word is swirling that the head honchos in D.C. might even shut the academy down.

The inquiry proceeds as a pretty standard affair of clues and carefully timed revelations, with Landor having to abide by the forensic limitations of the time. For example, the academy doctor, Daniel Marquis (Toby Jones), botches the initial autopsy and misses clues that indicate the death was a murder, not suicide.

The X factor that marks a departure from pure fiction is the odd cadet Landor recruits as his unofficial colleague and spy. He’s a poet who drinks a lot, is quite a bit more erudite than the other junior officers and shares Landor’s affinity for the macabre. He is Edgar A. Poe — that’s right, the writer of “The Raven” and many other morose works.

Here he is portrayed by Harry Melling, who you will not at all recognize from playing Dudley Dursley in the “Harry Potter” movies, Harry’s fat, spiteful cousin. He’s now skinny, almost emaciated, with a high forehead and close-set, thoughtful eyes. His Poe is a compelling characterization, loosely based on the poet’s real time as an artillery sergeant and West Point cadet.

Landor acts as the instructor/mentor, while Poe is able to use his linguistic skills to decipher clues, such as the partial note clutched in one of the dead cadets’ fists. Yes, I said “one,” because of course in this type of story more murders will follow the first, ramping up the hysteria at the academy and the resulting pressure on Landor to catch his man.

The cinematography by Masanobu Takayanagi is misty and shadowy, at times almost colorless in palette and pallorous in temper. In one memorable sequence, any army of cadets in blue-gray cloaks disperse through the forest in search of one of their missing fellows.

Gillian Anderson turns up as the good doctor’s wife, speaking in a sing-songy pitch and vacillating between judgmental observations and hissy fits. Harry Lawtey plays the son, Artemus, a haughty cadet who quickly becomes one of Landor’s prime suspects, and Lucy Boynton plays the daughter, Lea, whose acerbic manner and literary tastes attract the attentions of young Poe.

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Robert Duvall also appear in small but effective roles, barely more than cameos.

As the story moves along and the net begins to enclose the perpetrator, “The Pale Blue Eye” — that title taken from one of Poe’s poems — becomes less and less about ‘catching the bad man’ and more about the moral quandaries of those searching for them.

Landor is haunted by visions of his lost daughter — though, strangely, not his dead wife — and is barely able to hide his contempt for the upright military officers and their students. Their direction that he refrain from drinking during the job is quickly ignored.

Poe, who affects an air of confidence and superiority, reveals himself to be troubled by his lack of apparent attributes as a military man or potential husband. He’s somebody who’s been bullied so much, both figuratively and literally, that he’s built a whole persona as his armor and shield, and now it’s taken over his mind.

Bale’s Landor, almost by definition, is less of a showy role and more an internalized one. He only really gets to display some emotional colors in the head-turning final act, which at first I thought was merely a coda but is actually the inky heart of the piece.

“The Pale Blue Eye” is engaging, darkly beautiful and never dull. It’s not quite as emotionally engaging as I’d hoped, but as a crime story and character piece, it hits all the right notes.