When Scott Cooper saw Harry Melling as a limbless performer in the Coen brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, he knew he’d found his Edgar Allan Poe. But being cast as Poe and actually playing him in Cooper’s new film, The Pale Blue Eye, turned out to be two very different things. After all, putting a fresh, new fictional twist on a poet most people think they know can feel a bit like a high-wire act. Especially when you consider one particularly outsized challenge...

“Edgar famously had a very big forehead,” Melling tells Tudum. “Now I thought my forehead may be sufficient in size, but we decided, ‘No, no, if we’re going to make a choice, let’s go for it.’ ” And go for it they did. Soon Melling was having his hairline shaved back to a Jack Nicholson-style mop approximating Poe’s signature hairdo. You can see the results in a new trailer for The Pale Blue Eye below. 

The Pale Blue Eye follows veteran detective Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) as he hunts the perpetrator of a series of cold-blooded murders at West Point military academy. Along the way, he befriends Melling’s Poe, already chafing at the school’s restrictions. When Melling first read the script, he found its fusion of fact and fiction thrilling. “I thought, ‘What a great idea to take a historical truth and then to weave this Edgar Allan Poe narrative through that,’ ” he says. “And what better genre to choose than a detective story, seeing as Edgar was the godfather of the detective story.”

To portray the esteemed author of such macabre classics as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Melling dove deep into research on Poe’s life and discovered a few things he didn’t expect — especially about Poe’s early days, which the film chronicles. “In terms of his time at West Point, I just loved the fact that he went there because he thought, ‘Oh, this is a great place — I can just kind of sit around and write,’ which is just hilarious because he did anything but,” Melling says. “He was doing drills all the time. He was doing classes. The one thing he didn’t have any time for was writing.” 

Scott Garfield/Netflix 

This mismatch of intention and result led to Melling’s interpretation of Poe as a character. “Edgar’s both the smartest and also the silliest person at all times,” he says. “And all of that stuff is just really useful in terms of charting this mischievous, mercurial, charming, but very troubled early Poe.”

Melling is no stranger to acting opposite A-list performers: He shared the screen with Liam Neeson in Buster Scruggs and matched wits with Charlize Theron in The Old Guard. But trading lines with an Oscar winner like Bale (The Fighter, The Prestige) was a different story. “Christian is the most generous, giving actor that I’ve ever worked with,” Melling says. “He was just a joy from start to finish. He’s one of those actors who elevates you into a different space really.”

Much like Bale and Melling, the Landor and Poe of the film also find themselves elevating each other in distinct ways — and neither will ever be the same, especially Poe. “When we first meet him in the film, he’s very young. He’s innocent. He’s really trying out these different characters, this young poet identity,” Melling says. “And as the story goes on, he meets Landor and the character of Landor fills this huge void in his sense of belonging. Slowly, his identity becomes more rooted. It’s less about the performance side of things, and it’s more about revealing who he truly is.” 

Scott Garfield/Netflix 

Of course, he’ll also have to track down a killer. Not exactly your typical origin story for a young poet. 

The Pale Blue Eye is written and directed by Cooper, based on the novel by Louis Bayard. Alongside Bale and Melling, the film stars Gillian Anderson (The Crown), Lucy Boynton (Sing Street), Charlotte Gainsbourg (Melancholia), Toby Jones (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Harry Lawtey (Industry), Simon McBurney (The Manchurian Candidate), Timothy Spall (Spencer) and Robert Duvall (The Godfather). 

The Pale Blue Eye sweeps its gaze across select theaters on Dec. 23 and Netflix on Jan. 6.