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Beyond the Lens
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Ledger's Legerdemain
Heath Ledger is destined for an Oscar nod, but his performance in Brokeback Mountain was but one of four roles in a year in which the actor fully came into his own.
Tuesday, January 3, 2006
By Pam Grady
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Focus Features
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Ennis Del Mar
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Thanks to his heartbreaking performance as ranch hand Ennis Del Mar in Ang Lee's critically lauded Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger is having an awards season that most actors can only dream of. He has received several critics' awards and a Golden Globe nomination; he is a shoo-in for an Oscar nod, and may very well win.
Granted, this is not the 26-year-old Aussie's first brush with acclaim since he first washed up on American shores in the late 1990s. It is just that prior to this year, the type of awards he tended to be up for had nothing to do with any acting talent, such as a MTV Movie Award nomination for Best Kiss shared with Shannyn Sossamon for A Knight's Tale or the Teen Choice nod that he and Julia Stiles garnered for Sexiest Love Scene for 10 Things I Hate About You.
Indeed, from looking at Ledger's early films in the United States, it appears that he was positioned as a light leading man, safe and bland enough for young girls. Any acting talent he might possess was strictly secondary to his good looks and amiable charm. Only a pair of supporting roles in The Patriot and particularly Monster's Ball (where his tortured prison guard is a spiritual cousin to Ennis Del Mar) hinted at more to the Perth native than just another pretty face.
Then, in 2005, the actor's career fully flowered.
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Dimension Films
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Jacob Grimm
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Brokeback Mountain is only one piece of Ledger's breakthrough. There have been three other performances this year in films that have not received the critical reception of Brokeback, but each represents the further maturing of Ledger's talent. He was Skip, the surf shop owner in Stacy Peralta and Catherine Hardwicke's SoCal memoir The Lords of Dogtown; the younger, more credulous sibling Jacob in Terry Gilliam's [unfairly] critically drubbed The Brothers Grimm; and this month moviegoers can truly compare and contrast his range as he plays the exuberant 18th-century ladies' man in Casanova.
Taken together, these four films would appear to have nothing in common save for the participation of Ledger. But they all share something else: in each, the actor plays a character living somehow outside the approval of mainstream society: a homosexual in Brokeback Mountain, a con man in The Brothers Grimm, a denizen of the surfer/skateboarder demimonde in Dogtown; and a libertine in Casanova.
With the exception of Brokeback Mountain, Ledger's class of 2005 has allowed him stretch his comic muscle. The most unusual performance has to be his turn as Dogtown's Skip, if only because he seems to be channeling another actor, namely Val Kilmer. Skip is an alcoholic and as he puts the pioneering Zephyr skate team together, he is manipulative as he tests the loyalty of and plays god to the kids who hang out in his shop, deciding who makes the team.
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Touchstone Pictures
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Lord Jacomo Casanova
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In other words, Skip determines who is in with the in crowd. As one of the few grownups in the movie, he cuts a bad parental figure (not that one imagine Skip as an actual parent), initially dismissing Stacy Peralta from the team on the grounds that he wears that most bourgeois of contraptions, a watch.
The funny thing about The Lords of Dogtown is that Ledger is not much older than any of the actors playing the young skaters, but in terms of level of performance, he exists on a different plane. It is not that his junior co-stars lack talent, but with the exception of Michael Angarano, who plays the skaters' ill-fated pal Sid, their self-consciousness in their roles is palpable. Ledger is just so much looser. Skip is a jerk and ultimately a near-tragic figure, but Ledger finds his humanity and lightens him up, a bright spot in a movie with far too few of them.
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Columbia Pictures
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Skip
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Jacob Grimm in The Brothers Grimm may be a charlatan, touring the 18th-century German countryside with older sibling Wilhelm (Matt Damon) pretending to dispel fairy-tale curses, but a part of him never stopped being the little boy who traded the family cow for "magic" beans. Many critics – generally those who seem to have forgotten that Gilliam made his name in sketch comedy as part of Monty Python's Flying Circus – panned the movie for being too busy. Quite a lot happens as screenwriter Ehren Krueger tries to cram as many of the real brothers Grimm stories that he can. A lot of activity with no real point seems to be a general consensus, at least among those who think that wrapping those classic fairytales in Gilliam's signature surreal style and distilling them in a witty manner somehow isn't enough.
It is a busy movie and the calm at the center of it is Ledger, the straight man to Damon's ebullient scam artist. There is a lot going on on screen, what with Damon and Jonathan Pryce and Peter Stormare as the brothers' adversaries all hamming it up and all of Gilliam's creatures and other accoutrements through which he re-creates the Grimm's magical world. Jacob's is a quiet role, a less confident actor than Ledger might be tempted to jettison that aspect of the character in order to compete with the others in exulting the opportunity to indulge in pork. A less commanding performer would simply get lost on screen. That Jacob is ultimately leaves the most lasting impression of all the characters is testament to Ledger's focus.
Of course, it is Brokeback Mountain that has remade Ledger as an American household name, even among households where no one goes to the movies. Ang Lee's film, based on Annie Proulx's short story, arrived in theater with enormous buzz and expectations. It has been described as controversial, because of the gay nature of the story, even though it is at heart an old-fashioned romantic melodrama whose star-crossed lovers happen to both be men.
Certainly, Ledger and co-star Jake Gyllenhaal are not the first straight actors to play gay roles (not even the first in this season of Capote, Breakfast on Pluto and more) or the first to kiss each other and simulate sex on screen, but perhaps because they are both so young and unmarried (though Ledger has since fathered a child with his Brokeback co-star Michelle Williams), the pairing has created a firestorm of publicity. Even now with the movie in theaters, garnering nominations and breaking attendance records, the questions keep coming.
On CBS This Morning recently, Ledger was asked whether he worried that in taking the part and locking lips with his co-star that he might be jeopardizing his professional future. "That's why we used stunt doubles," he joked.
| Joking aside, Brokeback Mountain is one of those movies that captures the popular imagination because all of its elements mesh so well together, but one of those primary elements is Ledger's Ennis. The man is a ball of anger, self-loathing and confusion, who has trouble accepting himself and the nature of his relationship with Gyllenhaal's Jack, and who is terrified of opening that closet he has locked himself in even a crack. Yet, he transcends all that so fierce is his love for Jack.
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He is like a sunflower; he only opens up when the light is shining on him and that is Jack. It is a tremendous performance. Ennis' pain is so palpable and so is his joy in those few moments that he allows himself to feel it.
Closing out Ledger's singular year is Casanova and a character that is Ennis Del Mar's complete opposite. He is straight, he is not shy, he does not have a repressed or angry bone in his body, and he certainly loves himself. He does have a few things in common with Ennis – they can both handle themselves on a horse (unlike most actors in our post-Western world, Ledger was born to ride) and, oh yes, society would kill both of them if it could for their supposed sexual transgressions.
| Actually, Casanova is in far more danger of facing death for his forthright pursuit of fornication than Ennis is for indulging in the love that dare not speak its name. Ennis and Jack, after all, are discreet; Casanova certainly isn't and in 18th-century Venice, there was that pesky Inquisition to deal with.
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The prizes accumulating to Ledger for Brokeback Mountain will not similarly accrue for Casanova. The movie in which the characters don disguises and assumed identities at an alarming rate is an enormous amount of fun, but it is fluffy. Lasse Hallstrom has fashioned the cinematic equivalent of cotton candy – ephemeral, tasty, but not exactly nutritious.
In this season of Brokeback Mountain, Good Night, and Good Luck, Syriana and Munich, a joyous and silly light comedy is not going to end up on many (if any) Top 10 lists. But there are plenty of movies that never appear on those lists and or on awards shows that are worth seeing. This is one of them. And for anyone who has had their first real exposure to Ledger in Brokeback Mountain, Casanova is a fine place to start in seeing what else the actor has to offer. When it comes to range, this actor's is wide open.
| And when he looks back on 2005 in years hence, Ledger will no doubt look at it as the year his first child was born. For the rest of us it marks the year he came into his own and truly showed the world what he is capable of. From the example of this multitude of roles, that is apparently quite a lot. | |
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