Heath Ledger Dead.
We normally go out of our way not to report the news here at BC, the play is the thing, but I feel it would be in bad taste not to at least acknowledge this. Heath Ledger was found dead yesterday. The details are uncertain and beside the point. Ledger, an actor destined to age well, to get better, wilder, more interesting, is no longer. He leaves behind a child, an ex-wife, and one performance of major note: Ennis Del Mar of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain.
Ledger was the force of Brokeback Mountain, and the primary reason I saw the picture three times in the theatre. I was expecting a high toned Oscar wank, instead I saw a good movie with a lead performance of startling gravity, particularly for such a young man. The smart alecks had to mock the mumble he invented for the role. Did these folks take a moment to peak behind the mumble? The voice, the gestures, the body language, Ennis Del Mar looked like a piece of notebook paper folded in half: shrunken, creased, trying to disappear from the world. The heartbreaker of the film is that, at the end, he essentially succeeds in that aim, with only a daughter to notice. Most actors his age are chasing starlets around in forgettable junk; Ledger, at twenty-five-ish, was chasing the ghost of Marlon Brando.
It wasn’t as large a role, but Ledger also made an impression in the brilliant hall-of-mirrors Dylan film, I’m Not There. He had one of my favorite moments in the picture: a bit of self-absorption (even for Dylan) at an outside meal with friends that signals the beginning of the end for him and the continually suffering Charlotte Gainsbourg. Ledger was also the highlight in an acclaimed film that I didn’t particularly care for, Monster’s Ball. Everyone was writing about Halle Berry but it was Thornton and his broken relationship with Ledger, his son, that makes the film worth seeing once. Ledger also had that film’s one truly shocking moment of humanity: a cry for help that takes a lightening turn towards violence.
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:39 am
There’s something about an actor who could’ve coasted on his looks, but who chooses difficult roles.
Sadly, you feel like he was just getting started.
January 25th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Why does this seem so haunting, especially the picture you have chosen? It is hard to look at, frankly.