Friday Minute
No. 171 | October 1, 2010

Late for the Show

Our theme this week
Actors with posthumous nominations for Oscars

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   James Dean (1931-1955):  East of Eden, Giant
Tuesday         —   Spencer Tracy (1900-1967):  Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Wednesday    —   Peter Finch (1916-1977):  Network
Thursday        —   Massimo Troisi (1953-1994):  Il Postino (The Postman)

Heath Ledger (1979-2008):  The Dark Knight

Australian-born actor Heath Ledger had a short but remarkable career.  His credits include 10 Things I Hate About You, Monster’s Ball, Ned Kelly, Brokeback Mountain (earning his first Oscar nomination, for Best Actor), I’m Not There, and The Dark Knight, for which he won an Oscar, posthumously, as Best Supporting Actor.

Ledger’s roles had been a mix of good guys and bad guys, but as the Joker in the second installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman series, he created one of the great villains of cinema history.  Movies had already seen an iconic portrayal of the Joker—Jack Nicholson’s in 1989, still fresh in memory—but Ledger’s incarnation was something completely different.  Nicholson’s Joker was a comic, over-the-top prankster, Ledger’s a dark, diabolical psychopath.  Perhaps each decade gets the Joker it deserves.  (The Ledger version was actually more in keeping with the character as originally visioned in comic books of the 1940s.)

Villains always have more fun than poor Batman, and maybe that’s why there are so many of them.  In The Dark Knight, the mob is an everpresent threat to Gotham City, and to eliminate them once and for all, Batman teams with police lieutenant Jim Gordon and district attorney Harvey Dent.  The Joker makes an offer to the criminal bosses—he’ll kill Batman for them—but when they refuse, he kills the leadership and takes control of operations.  The Joker’s reign of terror begins.  During the next couple of hours, we see bombs blow up buildings, a hospital explode, a boatload of passengers held hostage, desperate chases through a virtual war zone, lots of killing, and all kinds of other fun stuff.  Nolan is adept at amping up the action, and as far as comic book films go, The Dark Knight is one of the better examples, a sleek feast for fanboys that offers plenty for the rest of us too.  That said, the movie, in my mind, has been overpraised (it’s a tendency with Nolan’s movies), and to whatever degree it serves as a current-day parable for the so-called war on terror, it has serious shortcomings.

What sets apart the film most of all is Heath Ledger’s great performance.  In January of 2008, a half-year before the film opened, the actor was found unconscious in his SoHo loft, and he died that day.  Cause of death was ruled an accidental combination of prescription drugs.  Word of his performance preceded release of the film, and the reaction, once it debuted, was overwhelming.  The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, and won two, including one for Ledger.

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The Dark Knight (2008)
Christopher Nolan, director
Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer, Bob Kane; writers
Wally Pfister, director of photography
Trailer

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The Dark Knight (2008)
Heath Ledger as the Joker

The Joker and Batman

The Joker crashes a party

The Joker:  “Here’s my card”

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Quote of note
“Do I really look like a guy with a plan?  You know what I am?  I’m a dog chasing cars.  I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it.  You know, I just—do things.  The mob has plans, the cops have plans, Gordon’s got plans.  You know, they’re schemers.  Schemers trying to control their little worlds.  I’m not a schemer.  I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.”
—The Joker (Heath Ledger), The Dark Knight (2008)

…58…59…60.