Ten years ago, Heath Ledger died at the way-too-young age of 28, before millions of people would witness his greatest work — The Joker in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.
The performance lives on as one of the all-time great pieces of work by an actor in a role. Iconic doesn't do it justice. Ledger took a role that Jack Nicholson made his own nearly twenty years before, a bold move by Warner Brothers that angered many fans of the notorious villain. If certain people had got their way, Ledger's take would have never made it to screens. You see, though, they had no idea what Nolan and Ledger had in store; a more real and completely sinister creation.
Ledger gave many fine supporting performances in Monster's Ball and 10 Things I Hate About You, and was very impressive in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (An Aussie mastering a mumbling cowboy), but they don't come close to his work in The Dark Knight.
He made a bad guy irresistible. You wanted more of him and even rooted for him in the end. As my friend and actor Frank Grillo once said, "you felt for that guy." It was more than a performance. Ledger's Joker was truly something else. In a movie full of grand actors and performances, his work stood head and shoulders above the rest. Remember the look on Michael Caine's face as Ledger popped out of the elevator at Bruce Wayne's (Christian Bale) party? It wasn't scripted. Caine's blown away look was method. He couldn't believe this felt so real, and neither could we.
Ledger didn't just want to do a good job; he wanted to make something unforgettable. That is why he locked himself in a hotel room for weeks putting together a journal that broke down the Joker's walk, voice, look, and personality. There were shades of A Clockwork Orange and Sid Vicious in there along with other mad ingredients. He really went all the way, the kind of work that has inspired other actors to do the same over the past decade.
The trailer that played before his passing gave away tiny hints of what was to come. You knew he had something wonderful in store, but that was still miles away from what would actually take place. Ask anyone on this Earth if he was masterful, and the answer will be yes. Everybody loved his Joker, and it wasn't even a hero...or was it?
Some people have described his Joker as a different kind of hero, albeit one that enforces his message in unconventional and wrongful ways. He was a voice of the people, crying out for masked heroes like Batman to show their face. He shut down the deadly mob and shined a light on humanity's worst attributes and instincts. He made Batman himself look in the mirror and wonder if his existence was noble. All using "bullets and a few cans of gasoline". Whether you think so or not, Ledger made you think about it.
There are two dynamic scenes with Ledger's Joker. The first is the interrogation scene where he turns Batman inside out, informing him of the public's true intentions towards him (that turned out to be true) and setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to his escape and a brutal blow to the cops and the masked vigilante himself.
The second involves Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart, also going for broke) in a hospital room. Tell me that Joker's line to Dent about people freaking out more about a mayor dying than a truck full of soldiers perishing isn't true. Tell me that fear doesn't drive every kind of form of anarchy on this Earth. The reason Ledger's Joker lives on so well is that his villain actually didn't just want to watch the world burn; he wanted people to know the truth about something dire yet required: themselves.
Where else do you get that in a comic book flick, or any movie? Where does a villain stay true to his word down to the end? The Joker wasn't in it for revenge, money, or glory. He wanted to pull the mask off not just Batman, but every single person. Ledger made that profound.
It's heartbreaking to think the movies haven't gotten to see the next phase of Ledger's career, all due to him being careless with prescription drugs on a fateful January night. He was just getting started. The Joker may stand as his best work, but his talent was just getting warmed up. His agent and Nolan have each hinted that there was going to be another Batman-Joker film. His agent cries every time he watches the footage because there was more there to explore.
I remember Daniel Day-Lewis accepting his Best Actor award at the Golden Globes the year Ledger died, and saying some truly touching words about the late actor. He talked about Ledger's craft and his performance in The Dark Knight like a fan would, raving about its depth and resonance. Ladies and gents, if there is one person actors can go to sleep on after getting a compliment from, it's Day-Lewis.
Every time I watch The Dark Knight, I see something different in Ledger's work. A tiny glimpse or the way a particular line is read. The nuances continue to reveal themselves today, ten years after his death and the film's release. That is the true sign of something memorable in film. When people are talking about it a decade later.
The bittersweet aspect of his early passing did make his performance larger than life at the time. He is the reason it still holds today as my personal favorite all-time performance.
Without Ledger's Joker, The Dark Knight is just another decent comic book movie and not seen as the standard of the genre.
Without Ledger's Joker, The Dark Knight doesn't help rewrite the way people look at comic book films and how they can be made in Hollywood. A blockbuster that can be critically acclaimed. He made you take comic book flicks seriously.
As the Joker himself would say, Heath Ledger's take on the villain changed things.
