I didn’t like Dark Knight. I thought it was a mess. I didn’t like individual elements and I didn’t like the whole either. It’s not that I didn’t “get it”, or that I was “afraid” of its implications. The fanboys have been rabid dogs about criticism of their baby, so I know all their arguments. No, it’s not that I quivered in my seat afraid of what I was actually seeing, and its power, and therefore have to “attack” it. And I’m not attacking it, anyway. I just didn’t like the movie, boys, chillax. More than anything, I felt it was incompetent. That was the weirdest thing about it, for me. A day after I saw it I could barely remember it. I’ve loved all the Batman films, so this was strange to me. But whatever, it’s a movie, you can’t win ’em all.
However, Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker is one of those rare rare things … what I would call a “performance for the ages”. I knew the second I saw the first scene with him in it that he was as good as everyone had been saying, and even better. The second you saw him, you couldn’t imagine anyone else in the part (even though we have seen many many actors play that part). He took it to another level. A vision of apocalyptic chaos, with something truly great underneath it: a philosophy. This was a man devoted to chaos, yes, but what made him truly frightening was the thought behind it. He knew what he was doing. He wasn’t a giggling lunatic rubbing his hands in glee (although he did that, too). He was a calculating thinker. That was where the fear came from, for me. It is difficult to suggest such a thing when you have that crazy makeup on your face, and you are required to say these “ba-dum-ching” pun-filled lines, which could add up to the impression that you think everything is a big “joke”. What was extraordinary about the performance, and it has stayed with me, was that yes, he thought it all was a big joke, and no, he found none of it funny. There wasn’t a shred of compassion in him, he was of a Ted Bundy-like nature – a cold-blooded killer, who not only enjoyed death and destruction, but enjoyed making people squirm beforehand.
I have been watching Heath Ledger for a long time. He had an interesting trajectory. With Knight’s Tale, the marketing component for that movie took over the entire experience. It was one of the most promoted movies I can remember. I was sick of it before it hit the screens. And who was that blonde hottie and why am I supposed to care? It was overkill. But then I saw the movie, and it was a lot of fun, and he was adorable in it. A real hunk, you know?
The bossy insistence of the marketing campaign did not seem to affect his career. He seemed to choose carefully what he would do next. The next film he appeared in was the low-key three-person Monster’s Ball. I couldn’t believe it was the same guy, first of all. He was wonderful in that movie. Heartbreaking and taciturn – a throwback to male movie actors of old. There was something stoic about him, but he managed to suggest the deep wells of loneliness in this guy. It was a very touching performance. That was when I got excited about Heath Ledger. I felt I was looking at a true talent, as opposed to what the Knight’s Tale marketing team wanted me to see: the Next Best Hot Thing. He was more than that.
Now he was somebody to really watch.
Lords of Dogtown was the next film I clicked into with Ledger – I hadn’t seen Four Feathers, or Brothers Grimm, and in Lords of Dogtown, he is nearly unrecognizable to what I had seen before. There’s almost a Dude-esque quality to his look here, all California beard and sunglasses, and the comparison to Jeff Bridges is deliberate. Jeff Bridges is my favorite living actor, and one of the things that Bridges, handsome, masculine, and without a doubt a movie star, can do is disappear. Like nobody else. This is not the current fetish of accents, weird walks, and “chameleon” tricks, which I find facile and ultimately shallow. Today I play a German-Latvian witch doctor, tomorrow I play a steel magnolia from Alabama with a cleft palate, and the next day I play the imperious Queen of Siberia in 300 A.D. Look at my skill!! It is what is being congratulated now, in acting, and acting – as a craft – goes through phases and developments just like any other craft. The days of big star PERSONAE are gone, where people like Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, John Wayne, et al, brought their star power to whatever role they did, always recognizably themselves, but marvelous to watch. No tricks. Nowadays, it is something else that is recognized as “good acting”, and I have feelings and opinions about that, but whatever, it’s the trend.
But Jeff Bridges disappears. These are not tricks, these are not skills. Whatever work he does (unlike most of the people being celebrated for this kind of stuff today) is completely invisible. His transformation is total. He submerges his personality entirely and something else emerges. Who knows how he does it. How is irrelevant. I mention Bridges because it is rare that a man that handsome has a career like the one he has. His sex appeal is undeniable, and obviously in his prime he played roles that capitalized on that – Against All Odds, Jagged Edge, Fabulous Baker Boys. But what he was actually doing in those parts was always way more subtle than your basic beefcake hottie fucking the gorgeous movie actress. I go into that in the piece I linked to above (especially in my comments on Fabulous Baker Boys).
When I saw Heath Ledger in Lords of Dogtown I was completely delighted by him. An old-fashioned word, but a propos. I just enjoyed him so much. Who was that guy? Not just the character, but HIM. He seemed to really get a kick out of acting, and not only that, but he had great skill. Skill that was (as I mentioned above) relatively invisible. He submerged himself, in all his young golden-boy handsomeness, into whatever part he was playing. There seemed to be very little ego in him. The JOB was the thing for him, not the celebrity or the sex symbol thing. That’s rare. The pressure had been on him from the beginning to fit into a certain pigeonhole – hot new young actor – and the choices he made continuously bucked against that. Good for him. Knight’s Tale, as cute as it was, could have ruined him. But he (and I am imagining he got a lot of advice telling him what to do, what to choose, what to play) did what he wanted. He took it down a notch. He got everyone’s attention, with the billboards on every bus for Knight’s Tale, and then immediately following, he took his career in a quieter more independent path. I thought that was really cool. Brave.
Then came the juggernaut that was Brokeback Mountain. I had a lot of feelings about that one going in, due to my love of the short story (I wrote about that here). I don’t think its an exaggeration to say that that was one of the greatest short stories I have read in the last twenty years. It knocked my socks off. I read it when it first came out, in The New Yorker, and it almost made me nervous, as things usually do when I realize I am in the presence of not just greatness, but something mythic, something truly important. I felt that way when I read Mary Gaitskill for the first time. It’s a rare sensation. That story came out in 1997, but my admiration for it was still vibrating through me when the movie came out. And although Ang Lee was at the helm (I thought that was a good, if not obvious choice), and I liked both Jake Gyllenhall and Heath Ledger – I got nervous. What would they do to it? I feel a sense of ownership towards that story, in the same way I do towards all works of literature that pierce me to my core. It took me years to see John Huston’s “The Dead”, because I felt I just couldn’t bear to see it outside of my own head. (I loved the movie, by the way). I refused to see The Shipping News, because the second I heard they cast Kevin Spacey as Quoyle I realized which way the wind was blowing, what interpretation they were going to put on it, and I thought: Not on my fucking watch. I won’t see that movie on principle. If they had cast John C. Reilly, I would have gone to see it, even though I would still have been nervous about what they had done to that precious book I love so much.
So I had all of that going in. Parts of Brokeback Mountain, the story, were with me word for word. I reread it before seeing the movie, trying to strengthen myself. Even if the movie was bad, it still wouldn’t touch the story!
Watching that film was an odd and incredibly emotional experience for me. First of all, the story is 30 pages long. How do you make a two-hour movie of that? Well. They took entire parts of it word for word, first of all. They didn’t change a damn thing, in terms of what those two men said to each other. And what they did add (details of Jack’s marriage to the Texas rodeo queen, fleshing out what is suggested in the story) was just right. I felt they honored the original work, especially in how those two actors played the scenes. What the story manages to convey in 30 pages is nothing less than breathtaking. You feel like you have been sucker-punched by the last line. What Ledger and Gyllenhall played here was twofold: the stoic unreflective nature of both of these men. They are like the animals they watch over. They bear it (in Ledger’s best line – “we just got to stand it.”) But they also play that this, out of nowhere, is love. It’s awful. It’s truly awful. There is nowhere to put such love, it fits in with no kind of life, and there are no options out of it. “We just got to stand it.” Both of them NAIL that very difficult balance throughout the film. It is that that gives the story its power (well, and Proulx’s off-the-charts writing), and without it, you’d just have a prurient fuck-fest. The context surrounding these men is as important as their love. Ang Lee directed that with delicacy, I thought, and sensitivity, not being too on the nose. There is the scene at Thanksgiving where Gyllenhall has to keep getting up to turn off the television, and his wife’s father keeps getting up to turn it back on. It’s a wonderful scene, truly tense and awful, evocative of the entire life of humiliation and emasculation this guy has experienced. It’s enraging. (This is one of the scenes that is NOT in the book, but it just goes to show you the adaptation was spectacular).
For me, it was Ledger’s movie, through and through.
As I wrote in my piece about him when he passed away:
It is one of the more visceral performances of recent memory. You could smell the nicotine on the edges of his fingers, you could smell his sweat. This was not a man who spoke much, felt comfortable speaking … and any time he did open his mouth to speak, it was as though the vocal cords took a while to realize: “Oh … we’re doing this now? We’re talking?”
Jim Emerson wrote about Ledger’s portrayal of Ennis:
Rare is the performance that can honestly be called a “revelation,” but that’s what it felt like to watch Heath Ledger in “Brokeback Mountain.” Not only did he bring iconic life and nuance to the existential loneliness of Ennis Del Mar, a taciturn but complex (and conflicted) character, but for such mature work to spring from the teen-idol star of “10 Things I Hate About You” and “A Knight’s Tale” was… well, revelatory itself — the astonishing revelation of a suddenly, fully developed actor who, in the superficial juvenile parts he’d played previously, had given little indication he was capable of such moving depth and clarity. Ledger emerged as if from a cocoon, gleaming with promise and flexing his wings.
The performance was revelatory in a lot of ways. It was revelatory in what he was able to suggest, with very few lines, it was revelatory in its raw passion and silent suffering, and it was revelatory about manhood, in general. I mentioned it being a “throwback”, and these are some of the things I have said before when I’ve written about Rourke, or Jeff Bridges, or Russell Crowe.
Brokeback Mountain relies on the cinematography of the gorgeous haunting landscape, as well as the sound of the wind whistling through almost every scene. You can feel the coldness of the mugs of coffee in their hands, and the scratch of the cold logs they sit on. The script is spare, and that is right. But none of it would have worked without Ledger’s quiet suffering stoic presence. It was not a put-on, it was not contrived. I did not feel that he lived now, for example. Heath Ledger was obviously an early 21st century man, that’s his time and place … but in Brokeback Mountain, no way on EARTH was that guy “now”. He does this with no tricks, no disguise.
The strangest thing about this is that when you saw him in interviews, and in person, he’s really just a gangly skinny little guy. I was always amazed by how slight he seemed in person. That picture of him skateboarding at the top of this post makes him look like a teenager, not fully grown up yet.
But he seemed much bigger in Brokeback Mountain. Not because of weight gain or anything artificial (he might have had a bit of padding there at the end, to suggest middle age). His size came from his presence, and that is really what I mean when I talk about him being a “throwback”. The old-time movie stars, creating personae that they would play in every movie, were huge because of their presence. Humphrey Bogart was a pipsqueak who had to stand on a damn BOX in his love scenes with Ingrid Bergman so that he seemed taller. But who had a bigger presence than that guy? And he didn’t have to manufacture it, or pump it up. All he had to do was show up. He plays chess in the first time we see him in Casablanca, the camera moves up from the board, and there he is.
Pow. Gets you right in the gut.
Heath Ledger, with every squinting suffering quiet moment in Brokeback Mountain, has the power of the old movie stars. Jake Gyllenhall, although wonderful as well, does not. He has a bit more of a stretch to seem middle-aged (although he does a nice job – you can see the work, but it’s okay, it’s an okay job) – and he also has to play a character who is more chatty, restless, and emotional. He does all of that.
But it’s Ledger’s movie. The misery he endures, without a complaint, quiet, gritting his teeth, turning his wife over when he fucks her so he can’t see her face, leaning against the trailer wall, head down … not saying much, not revealing much … but God, revealing everything. Marvelous. If our hearts don’t break for him, then none of it will work. Jack is more of a wild-card. We don’t worry as much about him, for some reason, even though he is the one more willing to flirt with danger. Ledger shows the heart of his character, a heart cracked open by love, something he almost resents and wishes would go the hell back where it came from.
It is an iconic performance, referencing us back to the giants of movie stars back then … when the power of your presence was what made you a star. It is also an amazingly generous performance. He did not protect himself. He turned it all inside out, so we could see.
I had been watching him for a while. I was strangely proud of him for that performance. I felt to myself, watching it, “Wow. Holy fuck. Good for you, dude. Good for you.”
Taken in context with the rest of his roles, it was obvious that we were looking at a giant talent.
The kind of talent I find lacking in today’s current trend – of more showy actor-y parts (and nothing against many of those performances – I do love a lot of them … it’s just that I have a fondness for the other kind of acting). Ledger has presence. Which again, was so funny, because he almost had NO presence in person. But that’s just the mark of his talent. His weirdness and passion and suffering went into his work. He didn’t wear it on his sleeve as a regular man.
Before The Dark Knight came out, some stills had been released, and some photographs taken while filming.
The images were startling, terrifying. What the hell was going on with Heath Ledger? It was amazing to see, and I know for me it got my hopes up to see the movie. Jack Nicholson as The Joker made an indelible impression, what a wacky performance, but suddenly, with one backstage view of Ledger filming the movie, all that was swept away. He looked demonic. Not just because of the makeup, but because of the dead cobra-light in his eyes. It was powerful. This character had obviously infiltrated him. You could see it in those stills.
I know he had problems during filming. He was insomniac, and he made a couple of mentions about how playing The Joker had disturbed him, made him manic (small wonder). His exhaustion shows in the role. Not that he seems tired, on the contrary, but that he seems on edge, at the end of his rope, with the manic clarity that sometimes comes when you can’t go to sleep, and it’s suddenly 3 in the morning, and you have to get up at 6:30 a.m., and all kinds of horrible thoughts start catapulting through your mind, about the world, your life, your disappointments, your lost dreams. I’ve had those moments. He doesn’t just nail such an energy, he plays it from the inside out.
It is a deeply unsettling performance. For me, it tipped the balance of the whole movie. Again, the fanboys have an answer for everything, and shriek, “BUT THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT.” I don’t think so.
Regardless, he is not just riveting – but inevitable, awful, relentless, with not a shred of conscience. We are so used to seeing “villains” onscreen, who are supposed to embody these anti-social things, but really just come off as cliched. The closest comparison to what Ledger did in Dark Knight is Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men, although, thinking about it more, I would say that Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter is also close to what Ledger was getting at here. You do not reason with these men. You do not reason with a cobra. You kill the cobra. That’s your only option. There are forces of anarchy on the planet, and it is best to recognize them for what they are, not rationalize them away, or try to “understand”. The thing is: if you truly understand, then you know what you must do: obliterate that force as quickly as possible. Understanding does not always mean empathy. Sometimes it means resolve.
Heath Ledger is out of this world in that movie. He, as an actor, obviously tapped into something so primal and real that it made it down into his cellular structure. You cannot see an actor there – and with a part like The Joker, that is so difficult! It’s all artifice and jokey lines. But he is truly frightening, especially when he gets quiet and “thoughtful”.
The thing that is so great about his performance, so above-and-beyond anything else that is in that movie, is that it has a chilly inner logic to it, and that’s the worst part of all. If The Joker just thrived on chaos, then we could perhaps condescend to him, like he’s a silly (albeit dangerous) child, who needs a Time Out, and desperately. But Ledger is playing a man with a philosophy of life, far far stronger than those on the “right” side, who spout vague platitudes about justice and order, but who can’t even come close to the level of belief that The Joker has in chaos.
He trumps everything.
Ledger, in a slamdunk, is not just acting here, he is embodying an idea – and boy, the pitfalls to be didactic and obvious are everywhere. He avoids all of them. His moments of grief, when tears stream down his face, are grotesque, commedia dell arte gone deeply satanic. The mask is so complete that he has internalized it. There is no differentiation between the face and the man.
How he accomplished all of this I will never know, but I chalk it up to his giant talent, which was already on display, and his power of imagination. What an imagination. He could dream his way into that? What else could this man do?
And so I sit here today, and I just find it odd and sad that he is gone.
A young man.
But he’s left an impressive (albeit too short) body of work. I mourn now what I won’t get to see. I mourn what won’t be.
He was the real deal.
A young slim man in a hoodie skateboarding through Brooklyn. Disappearing before our eyes.
Very nice post….
I’ll just comment on my own reaction to his Joker and Dark Knight…I’ll call a spade a spade, and say my reaction was the ultimate fanboy’s. Been reading comics for too close to 30 years for comfort now. The Joker’s always been my favorite, this despite the fact nobody’s gotten him exactly how I saw him in my head.
Ledger’s performance was closest to hitting the nail right on the head.
The rest of the movie…maybe a 6, or a weak 7 on a scale of 1-10 for me…if we can get the hoarse whisper out of Batman’s voice that Michael Keaton put in there 20 years ago, Christian Bale’s Batman in this movie might be a touch less annoying…and let’s take a look at Robert Downey’s Tony Stark in Iron Man for how a millionaire playboy should act….
But Heath Ledger’s Joker? That’s like a 12 or 13 for me.
And I should say that my personal tastes tend toward the messy, so it kinda fits me….
But I get where you’re coming from.
Well, the ultimate fanboy response has appeared to be “U SUCK BITCH DARK KNIGHT IS BETTER THAN CITIZEN KANE”, so give yourself some credit.
I won’t go into my problems with the movie because I’d rather talk about Ledger. It is amazing to me when a person seems to capture a character that has been living in your mind for 30 years or so. Or at least comes close. That is no small task.
Like I said in the piece – Ledger wasn’t just playing a character, he was embodying something – and I thought it was a fearless assault of a performance. Couldn’t get over it!
I’m a fanboy. Like Tommy, I’ve been reading comics the majority of my life. But unlike Tommy, I feel like you – I thought the Dark Knight was a mess, especially after Batman Begins was SO good.
Ledger’s performace was great and I agree it was memorable, but I guess the wreck of the film kind of ruined even that for me.
Well, again, then you are obviously different from the people who sent death threats to my friend Keith for giving the film a bad review, posting his address on the Internet. Those are the people I am talking about. They have made conversation about the film truly difficult. Their loss.
But back to Ledger and the scope of his very short career, which is why I posted this today, in light of the Oscars last night::
I need to go back and see Monster’s Ball. I remember my first response to it – I was blown away. Then I saw it again, and was like, “Why on earth did I like this so much?” The performances are all nice, but I felt the clunkiness of the architecture way more on second viewing.
I would like to see it again. Obviously Halle Berry is the focus, but I really really remember Ledger’s scenes – and again, he probably has 10 or 20 lines, but your heart just ached for the guy.
He was 20 years old when he made that film. Pretty remarkable. The sensitivity and ability that was there.
And also – the way he was filmed in Dark Knight – the angles and the costume – really bulked him up, he seemed enormous. Again, with the contrast of his almost teenager-boy skinniness in person. It was strange, I’d see pictures of him on red carpets with his girlfriends, or whatever, and sometimes I wouldn’t even recognize him. Who is that? Oh yeah. Heath Ledger. That’s what he looks like?
Great post, Sheila. Like Tommy and Cullen, I’d call myself a “fanboy,” but I liked the movie more than either of them did. Something about seeing it in IMAX just blew me away. But you’re right about the reaction to Keith’s review, that was so bad that I finally had to stop reading.
Watching it again on DVD a couple of times, it’s pretty clear that once the initial reaction wears off, there are a lot of flaws in the movie. I still like it a lot, but there’s no question that all the amazing parts have to do with Ledger. A truly amazing performance.
Totally agree about Monster’s Ball. It was upsetting to see him leave the film so early. His performance was so good. I know patriarchal families like that and it was scary to watch. Ledger just drove that home so well.
But, in typical fanboy fashion, my favorite film of his is probably The Brothers Grimm. I can’t wait to see what Gilliam did with him in Dr. Parnassus.
Great comments about Ledger, Sheila. I love the passion and intensity of fanboys, but when that crosses over into self-righteous know-it-allism, it gets frustrating and even a little boring. It’s much more interesting to hear conflicting opinions about films than to just sit in an echo chamber of universal applause. People making death threats are just downright insane.
Have you seen those people who started an online petition to have the Joker character permanently banned from Batman movies because supposedly nobody will ever top him? That’s just silly.
Emily – yeah, it ends up not being about the movie but about THEM (and God, I certainly can relate to that, I have done it myself – uhm, Skyward?)- but yeah, that kind of thing is just silly, and also really INSANE when directed at people who don’t just jump on the “it was 100% perfect” bandwagon.
Annoying.
But I truly believe Ledger’s performance will be remembered – “one for the ages”. It is so NOW, so of its moment … He clicked with it. I recognized that from the first second I saw his big mug on the screen. It’s like my hair blew back off my face.
Great stuff!
Cullen – hmmm, your comment on Monster’s Ball makes me want to see it even more. I had forgotten about that aspect of it.
My sister-in-law didn’t see the movie so she asked, innocently, “Did he get the Oscar because he died, or because he deserved it.” There was no hesitation, “He completely deserved it!”.
Great post Sheila.
Great post. I agree with your thoughts on the movie and loved how you pointed out what made Ledger’s Joker so different. Nicholson was never scary or threatening to me. Ledger’s Joker scared the shit out of me- especially that weird tic he had of licking his lips. BRRRR
David – Hi, friend!!
II think Michael Shannon was pretty damn good in Revolutionary Road – but there was no contest, in terms of where the actor had to “go”, what he had to bring out.
Ledger would have won it regardless of his untimely death- I agree.
It was a HUGE performance.
Not to be a rubber stamp, but I agree with many of the comments here about Dark Knight. I, too, thought it was a jumbled mess–even more so than my worst expectations. Ledger’s performance is amazing, and, in some ways, I think the movie detracts from his performance. Fortunately, the performance rises above the quagmire. It seemed like one of those movies wherein the people making it probably had a concrete grasp of the narrative arc, but, somehow, they forgot to convey that arc to the viewer. It was like they “got” it, but they didn’t put it on film. My wife and I kept saying to each other, “I don’t get what the hell is going on in this scene, or what it means to the story.” Anyway, I’m just glad that there are those who agree with me. Thought I was on a boat by myself. As for Ledger, I just think, “How sad, and what a waste.”
I know people who loved the movie – and, thank God, were able to articulate their reasons for it in a normal manner that did not involve death threats or name-calling or condescension. (Jim Emerson has been hosting a really interesting and sometimes contentious discussion series on his blog about certain shots in The Dark Knight – people get annoyed -but he really wants to talk about the nuts and bolts of the thing … and some of the conversations have been great – with the contributions of people who loved the film being really excellent additions to the discussion. Not for casual film fans. They got into camera angles and jump-cuts – but of course to me that’s blood to a vampire.)
Great way to talk about a film that has an audience divided – especially because the conversation was so dominated by shrieking threatened fanboys at the beginning that it was fucking retarded.
It wasn’t really like the times in my life when Forrest Gump, Saving private Ryan, English Patient, and Beautiful Mind were “blowing everyone away” – and I hated them. Haaaaaaaaated them. I had a distinct feeling of being “out of it” with my response to those movies, like: wow, to me the emperor has zero clothes here … but everyone is coming in their pants right now … and … wow … not only do I really not see it, I am not willing to “take a closer look”.
I rarely dig in my heels like that, but with those movies I did.
Not that I need to be in line with a majority – I rarely am – Lost in Translation was my favorite movie the year of Lord of the Rings … But with those movies I mentioned above, everyone flipped out to such a degree that I thought, “Well, well. In this case, I sure as shit don’t ‘get it’.” I almost relished in my contrary nature, because it was just so ACCEPTED that EVERYONE loved those movies. Public, industry, you name it.
Dark Knight I had a feeling would be a giant hit – it had “hit” all over it. I wasn’t pissed off by it or anything like that- and Ledger was riveting … I was just like, “whatevs … boring.” But I wasn’t angry about it whereas I was actively ANGRY about Forrest Gump.
hahahaha
Seems so silly now, but I truly was in a rage.
But again: for film buffs, Dark Knight fans, and people into the real architecture of film – I highly recommend Jim Emerson’s series of conversations about it. If you love the film, you might be defensive – but have no fear: he really really wants to discuss what worked, and what did not (for him).
(He blogs at the Sun times – it’s called Scanners).
Here’s a link to Jim’s blog. To be clear, he did not like the film, felt it was a mess – and was dismayed by how people seemed unable to discuss what worked for them in a normal way – it was a ridiculously low level of conversation – with people saying stuff like, “so it’s not Shakespeare”, but then at the same time declaring it was the greatest movie ever made.
Now you may scoff at how serious all this is – but to many of us out here, this kind of stuff is serious. It’s also fun. By facing any criticism with a condescending, ‘it’s not meant to be Shakespeare” – you’re just cutting off conversation. It’s a dumb argument.
There was one reviewer who said, “If you don’t like Dark Knight, you are, frankly, choosing irrelevance.”
You have got to be kidding me.
Fine then. I choose irrelevance. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Jim began to break down certain shots that didn’t work for him … and many people really balked at it, like he was being “mean” (sigh. that’s another thing. What are you, 6? Criticism isn’t necessarily “being mean”.) … but once things got going, it’s quite interesting. He was not just interested in “attacking” – he wanted to set up a forum where fans of the film could say, in detail, “Okay, here’s why that shot worked for me …”
Emerson was a great host, and willing (nay, EAGER) to hear intelligent people defend the film they loved. That was what he had been missing all along.
Long long comment threads, hundreds of comments … but if you’re into that sort of thing, I considered his Dark Knight series to be essential reading for a while. And the people who thought it was interesting and decided to play along (as opposed to the ones who kept saying, “I don’t know why you keep posting about this – we GET that you didn’t like it, Jim – let it go, let it go”) – really come off well. Many of the “defenders” make a pretty strong case. I still don’t see it – but I appreciate how they express their ideas and what they perceived. it’s interesting to see another perspective.
Anyway, worth a look.
…I am strangely gratified to hear that somebody else didn’t like Saving Private Ryan. Everybody I knew absolutely loved it and I didn’t, and because I am unwilling to revisit the film I’ve never known whether it was a bad film, or if it’s just my weird and irrational hatred of war movies kicking in. Jerry Maguire was another one that I just didn’t get – that one I didn’t hate but I couldn’t bring myself to care about it either.
I did love the Dark Knight a whole lot and thought it was a blast, but it has its faults for sure (Christian Bale, take a throat lozenge please) and Ledger’s preformance kicked the whole thing over sideways. He made the Joker frighteningly plausible – he was no longer a cartoon character. The scariest thing might have been that all the flamboyance, the scars and make-up, the tics and twitches are all just on the surface of that character. None of that is why he’s frightening – he’d be just as disturbing in a three piece suit because he was capable of creating something bigger than himself – that’s why the philosophy of chaos was brilliant. The Joker was the kind of fanatic that might inspire other fanatics. The problem is that the villian of the movie, however horrifying, became far more riveting than the hero and Batman looks a little foolish in comparison. All of this is down to Ledger’s acting.
Heath Ledger’s death is a loss that’s going to be felt for a while.
Oh, and Tommy – just had to add that my tastes run towards messy as well. Cassavetes, movies like 5 easy pieces – where things are not neat and in little plot-point boxes. I thought Dark Knight was a mess in a BAD way. Just to clarify.
Desirae – I totally agree that the “trappings” of the Joker had very little to do with why he was frightening here. It was the demeanor, the eyes. shivers.
Just re-read the post I wrote about Brokeback Mountain, and found this quote from Annie Proulx herself:
I’m with you on the 5 Easy Pieces, actually.
This one’s more a mess, to my mind, of a trying to do too much with too little, beyond the Joker performance. Too much crammed into a box, maybe. I dug it, all the same.
Not enough to send death threats.
Just don’t start bashing the Police Academy movies. Then we might have to fight ;)
Tommy – hahahahaha Big ol’ throwdown over Police Academy! But I love those movies!!
I think maybe it did try to do too much – hence the sloppiness I felt in it – There are certain movies that I love beyond measure despite their flaws – because they just happen to hit me in the sweet spot, or they are perfect expressions of something that I already love … so I do hear where you are coming from. I know a lot of people who felt that way.
I also loved that so much of it was so obviously filmed in Chicago. I was like, “Hey! That’s Lower Wabash! I made out with someone right there!”
Desirae – I’m a big war-movie fan myself – I would count some of my favorites as war movies – but boy did Saving Private Ryan rub me the wrong way. If I wanted to be lectured, I’d go to school, thank you. The last line – “Earn this” – seemed to ME to be totally unintentionally funny, because I felt like the movie should have given ITSELF that very same command. Why don’t you concentrate on EARNING an emotional response from me instead of just ASSUMING you already have it, or thinking I’m too stupid to be treated like an intelligent adult and therefore need to be pandered to, and stop freakin’ lecturing me like an idiot. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Boy, that movie burned me up.
They earned ZIP with me with their condescending didactic lecture. Wow. I guess I’m still mad.
For some totally bizarre reason (I still don’t understand – since normally I can’t stand Renee Zellweger) I loved Jerry Maguire. I don’t get it.
I suppose personal taste is rarely consistent!
I will say this – as a counterpoint – the opening half hour of Saving Private Ryan is as horrifying as any war sequence I have ever seen in any film. Period. It was masterful. I was IN it.
But the rest of it?
Fuck THEM.
Yeah.
I guess I’m still not over it.
Sheesh. Some movies just make me mad!!
I love the way this thread reads almost as if you are talking to YOURSELF about how much you hate that movie. It’s hilarious. But I know what you mean. There are some movies that just mentioning the title makes me angry.
The Village. Dude, excuse me. I need to go punch something.
Prisoner of Azkaban. Seriously, when people say they how much they liked it, my palms itch from wanting to slap them.
And while there is no one I loathe more than Tom Cruise, the goodnight kiss in Jerry Maguire is as hot a kiss as was ever filmed. Even Zellweger said he was so good in that movie that when it wrapped it was like he had dumped HER!
I hate him even more for making me like him in it.
hahaha
It’s just a very strange sensation when something everyone not only loves but reveres as the deepest most profound expression ever to be put on film puts you into a frothing rage.
You go: “wow. I am totally out of step.”
I used to get literally PLEADING emails from people to ‘watch Forrest Gump again’, as though I just hadn’t SEEN it enough to be swept away by its inspirational power. I wouldn’t respond to the emails, because all I wanted to do was say, “How much you want to PAY me to watch that insulting piece of shit again? I’ll watch it again for a thousand bucks. Pay up.”
grrrrrr.
And if you’re insecure AT ALL, you start thinking, “Am I that stupid? What am I not getting? IS IT ME?! It’s me. I’m stupid,” ad nauseum.
Totally! It’s a weird feeling.
There have definitely been movies that have benefited from me going back to “have a second look” – I’ve definitely changed my mind before – and a friend of mine was so upset about my rage in regards to Forrest Gump that I did see it again just to please her, and also because I was curious: Is it that bad? Am I over-reacting??
Like I said, I don’t normally get ENRAGED at movies. I can count them on one hand – mentioned most of them here … so yeah, I saw Forrest Gump again.
Nope. Still hate it.
I just had to chalk that one up to me being TOTALLY out of touch with the general zeitgeist – not the first time!!
It’s kind of a weird thing, I didn’t notice my reaction until the second time I saw The Dark Knight – the part where (spoilery) the Joker and his gang have taken the place of the color guard and shoot at the mayor. I watched it and my reaction was, “Ah! The Joker was in disguise!” But… he wasn’t in disguise. That would’ve been the character’s real face. I think it says something about Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker, that when I saw the Joker sans makeup, I felt that there was the Joker wearing makeup, and that his “real” face was the white mask.
It seems like that sort of makeup could be a handicap to an actor, but I’d say Ledger pulled it off admirably.