Original-Cin Q&A: Pale Blue Eye’s Christian Bale, Harry Melling on Conjuring Edgar Allan Poe

By Bonnie Laufer

Macabre 19th century story The Pale Blue Eye finds Christian Bale portraying a detective and grieving widower hired by officials at the West Point military academy to investigate an on-campus hanging that turns shockingly brutal with the details. Cadets appear to be involved on all ends, including a captivating young soul named Edgar Allan Poe, played with scene-stealing bravado by Harry Melling of Harry Potter fame.

Read our review of The Pale Blue Eye

Our Bonnie Laufer caught up with stars of this dark thriller via ZOOM ahead of its streaming on Netflix January 6.

ORIGINAL-CIN: Christian, the detective that you are playing, Augustus Landor, is quite subdued for most of the film. There's quite a slow build for the character until the final act. What was it that connected you to him?

CHRISTIAN BALE: He's a complex individual but he likes to give an appearance of being a simple man. He's a highly intelligent man, but he doesn't want anyone to know about that and so in his bearing and in the way he speaks he alludes that he is quite reserved. He's a very successful detective whose career is behind him, who has looked to retire and live out his days peacefully. Unbeknownst to him, the people and the stories that will come to really define his life are still ahead of him. What I was also very much drawn to is that it's a father-son story of the relationship that brews between himself and Poe and then there’s the whodunit aspect. I was intrigued by that but more so by giving Edgar Allan Poe a back story, an origin story which I found extremely fascinating.

O-C: Which sets it right up for you, Harry. You are extraordinary in this movie. The opportunity to give somebody like Edgar Allan Poe a backstory is a gift.

HARRY MELLING: I know, it really was a gift. When I first read what (writer/director) Scott Cooper sent to me, I thought, ‘Wow, what an opportunity to reinvent this character for an audience’ because I think people have a very firm idea of who Edgar was. Then to go back and look at the events that potentially turned him into this person — although we're fictionalizing it a bit — was quite juicy. He was at West Point, for example, at 30. So, there's historical facts peppered through, but it was a real opportunity. And certainly, the range in which Scott gave to the character of Poe was something that was both daunting but also such a wonderful gift.

O-C: Christian, why do you think that Landour and Poe connected which translated so well onto your on-screen chemistry with Harry?

CB: Well, Harry's a very experienced actor and a really wonderful actor and it was just easy and really pleasurable to work with him. At first Landour is irritated yet a little fascinated by this somewhat foolish figure that Poe seems to be and initially disregards him as Poe is disregarded by almost everybody in his life at that point. There's a great reversal that occurs in the film where the character, who seems to be the flightiest and the most unreliable, actually turns out to be really the most centered in spite of appearances and so they ultimately come to learn a great deal from each other. I love how the hard-drinking, morose, grumpy Landour influenced and helped to forge the hard drinking, morose and grumpy Edgar Allan Poe that the world came to know and love.

O-C: Harry, you're sitting next to one of the greats. I would watch Christian Bale read the phone book and I think, ‘Money well spent.’ What did you take away from working with him?

HM: When you work with great actors, they just elevate you to their place, whatever you want to call it, their place, their genius, their whatever. So, every day I was lifted to that space and Christian is truly one of the most generous of actors I’ve ever worked with. Every day getting to get the opportunity to work with him was truly special. But…

CB: Don’t let him fool you! Harry knows exactly what he's doing. He's his own man and he's been doing this for a long time. He's absolutely brilliant in this. There's nothing that I was able to teach him.

Watch Bonnie’s interviews with The Pale Blue Eye director Scott Cooper and co-stars Lucy Boynton and Harry Lawtey.