In this section of our Colossus Movie Guide for The Pale Blue Eye, we will explain the film’s ending.
Cast
- Christian Bale – Augustus Landor
- Harry Melling – Cadet Edgar Allan Poe
- Lucy Boynton – Lea Marquis
- Simon McBurney – Captain Hitchcock
- Timothy Spall – Superintendent Thayer
- Toby Jones – Dr. Daniel Marquis
- Harry Lawtey – Cadet Artemus Marquis
- Fred Hechinger – Cadet Randolph Ballinger
- Joey Brooks – Cadet Stoddard
- Charlotte Gainsbourg – Patsy
- Robert Duvall – Jean-Pepe
- Gillian Anderson – Mrs. Julia Marquis
The end of The Pale Blue Eye explained
Recap
At the end of The Pale Blue Eye, Poe reveals Landor killed the young cadets. While we were led to believe Lea and her family were the murderers, their only crime was ripping the hearts from the young men’s dead bodies—a happy coincidence that provided cover for Landor as he investigated the killings.
Once Poe learned the cadets were responsible for driving Mattie to suicide, Poe understood that the woman (named Lenore) described in the poem dictated by his dead mother wasn’t Lea—it was Mattie. Landor’s daughter was the one with the “pale blue eye” shrouded by darkness.
Poe came to this conclusion by matching Landor’s handwriting to the note that led to Leroy Fry’s death. But instead of using the note to implicate Landor, Poe burns it, leaving Landor to live with his guilt.
It is revealed that Landor attempted to stop his daughter from committing suicide—unsuccessfully. He watched Mattie has she jumped from a cliff. At the end of the movie, he returns to that same cliff and stands at the edge. As a gust of wind blows through, he lets Mattie’s hair ribbon float away, saying, “Rest, my love.”
Meaning
The main question you might have at the end of The Pale Blue Eye is: did Landor jump to his death like Mattie? Which is a fair question. But the real heart and meaning of the ending goes beyond this mere detail.
The key is that phrase Landor mutters at the end: “Rest, my love.” There is catharsis, there is solace in that statement. The idea of “rest” offers an aura of peace and tranquility; a break from something exhausting and arduous. Ostensibly, Landor is telling Mattie that she can now rest in the afterlife. But it may go much deeper than that—and apply to Landor instead of Mattie.
There are a couple roads we could go down in regards to Mattie. Landor may have murdered the cadets to enact personal revenge, but he may have also believed that their deaths would allow Mattie to find peace in the afterlife that she couldn’t find on earth.
Mattie was tortured by these cadets’ evil crime in the mortal world, so she took her own life. But Poe’s poem describes somebody in limbo:
Down, down, down
Came the hot threshing flurry
Ill at heart, I beseeched her to hurry
Lenore
She forbore the reply
Endless night
Caught her then in its slurry
Shrouding all, but her pale blue eye
Darkest night, black with hell
Charneled fury
Leaving only
That deathly blue eye
Poe mistakenly believed the poem was about Lea, who was stricken with illness and on the brink of death—but Poe’s dead mother was actually communicating about someone in purgatory. We learn that Mattie had pale blue eyes herself, so the poem leads us to believe she is surrounded by evil in whatever ethereal realm she exists. Thus, Landor’s final quote could be a message to her, telling her that the evildoers on earth have been punished and that she can now rest.
But on a deeper level, this quote applies to Landor himself. After losing his daughter, Landor was in shambles—a vessel of the human being he once was. His reason, his vigor, his spirituality had drained away into the atmosphere, leaving a barren man who couldn’t fathom living his mortal existence.
Landor may have killed those men for his daughter, but he also did it for his own spirituality, to save his very soul. He was tortured by the absence of Mattie, and his only means of manifesting a connection was through the merciless act of murder. Before these crimes, the only connections he retained were the physical objects in his home—things like Mattie’s books and her hair ribbon. But through such physical savagery, he finally felt something. Landor may not have been able to stop Mattie from jumping off the cliff, but he was able to punish the men that led to her fall. And he can hold onto whatever catharsis that brought—he can now rest.
So perhaps Mattie wasn’t in spiritual limbo because of the heinous act committed against her. Perhaps she’s in such distress in the afterlife because her father was unable to cope with the inevitability of death. So here at the end of the movie, perhaps he does jump. Or perhaps he is simply telling Mattie that he’s ready to live his life again. Either way, it’s a statement that releases him from the torture, that allows either Mattie’s spirit or Landor’s perception of Mattie’s spirit (or perhaps both) to find peace. He’s ready to let Mattie go—so he lets go of the ribbon.
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