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The heart is a symbol, or it is nothing, Poe explains.
To remove a mans heart is to traffic in symbol.
And who better equipped for such labor than a poet?
Poe fascinates Landor, who starts to look at this young odd fellow with fondness.
And Poe, who says he sometimes speaks to his dead mother, could use some paternal grounding.
This father-son dynamic powers the whole picture and sets up several key moments in the films climax.
He alternates between swells of sadness and grandiosity, the mark of an honest-to-goodness Romantic.
You feel the tragedy of his winding up at a place like West Point.
(In real life, Poe lasted only a few months at the school.)
(As it turned out, both sort of happened.)
Were dealing with a fundamentally cozy genre, however, and familiarity is allowed and encouraged.
Plus Cooper understands that cliches handled with confidence can be effective.
(This is, after all, the man who madeCrazy Heart.)
So he leans into them.
A doomed character doesnt just cough early on they have a full-on seizure.
Exposition is delivered with actorly aplomb.
plays the doctors emotionally fragile wife; Charlotte Gainsbourg (!!)
Robert Duvall (!!!)
plays a professor of the occult.
(Is he the only American in the cast?
Even so, what ultimately resonates are the pictures surprisingly moving central relationship and its vivid setting.
