Ledger a Revelation in The Dark Knight

Comics Movie Reviews
Ledger a Revelation in The Dark Knight
By Beth Davies-Stofka
July 18, 2008 - 19:15

Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Produced by: Charles Roven, Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan
Release Date: July 18, 2008 (wide)
Rating: PG13
Distributors: Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution

The Dark Knight

The theater seemed just a little bit darker just before the movie started. The overture seemed just a little more ominous. With the heightened buzz surrounding The Dark Knight, especially the hype generated in the wake of the tragic death of star Heath Ledger, it was hard to know how to prepare. Had Mr. Ledger's unwelcome and untimely passing led self-regarding Hollywood to overstate the quality of his performance?

Not at all, as it turns out. With great respect for his predecessors, Cesar Romero and Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger transformed the Joker from human being to abstraction. The Joker has no past, and doesn't need one. He has no family, no finger prints, no name, and no known address. He is the embodiment of the one thing humans try so hard to control, namely, fear. Like a Mephisto of Gotham, Ledger's Joker is a force of nature in human form. It is a brilliant reinterpretation of a well-known villain.

In Mr. Nolan's Batman Begins (2005), Bruce Wayne confronted his worst fears, converting them into a symbol that put fear in the minds of Gotham City's criminals. Batman took back the night. But in The Dark Knight, we learn that this plan had unintended consequences. Wayne's fear, intended as a weapon of deterrence, has conjured a gruesome apparition of Fear Itself in the form of Mr. Ledger's Joker. Fear, Batman finds, is hard to fight. It doesn't want anything, except more fear.

Ledger is riveting. His greasy hair, smudged make-up, and obsessive lip-licking create a picture of a truly rancid individual. Ledger possesses the screen, consuming every pixel of light like a great black hole of cruelty. He menaces and threatens while spouting keen observations about his own meaning, the yang to Batman's yin. And he does this without strutting or chewing the scenery. He is dangerously focused. When he announces that "Slaughter is the best medicine," the pun isn't funny. It's window-dressing on grave and unwavering purpose.

Oddly though, Ledger's Joker isn't scary. He delivers some of his most provocative and literate lines while wearing an old nurse's uniform, a starched white dress. As he walks away from yet another scene of yet another crime in this dress, he seems too thin, and rather bent, The Joker's grotesque head too big for his body. The actor behind the character suddenly comes through, surprisingly young, and rather frail. The moment doesn't work, The Joker's callous humor undercut by the sudden fragility of the image.

I fully expected The Dark Knight to present heartbreak and tragedy, to push Batman further into darkness, and to showcase a revelatory performance by an actor who died far too soon. And it did all of this. But I also expected The Joker to scare me, since after all that is what fear is supposed to do. But Ledger's death took the fear away, leaving pity and regret in its place.

We'll never know Ledger's story and we'll never know what might have become of Ledger's Joker. The mystery haunts us, another shadow in the world of shadows inhabiting Mr. Nolan's dark and visionary movie. But for this shining moment, a great actor showed us how great he could be. We must be content with that.

Rating: 10/10