While I don't appreciate the man’s desire to push himself to the edge of sanity, I also can’t help but admire his courage.
Acting is a dangerous profession, particularly for an artist who's in the early stages of self-discovery. In the effort to bring himself to a character, he can lose focus of his identity. It becomes even more dangerous if he’s the kind who can't help going even deeper, probably defining layers that never existed to begin with. I don't know what is worse - a child artist being broken down by the director for the sake of creating a well-rounded fictitious character, or a grown up choosing to do that to himself. I don't know what is worse - Dying, probably as an aftermath of completely unhinging yourself to play a mad-crazy-blazing brilliant villain, or living on, knowing that you could have reached the pinnacle of artistic achievement. One thing I do know is that Heath Ledger will become a legend, and The Joker will have carved a painful image on the minds of many.
I'm done questioning whether I'm giving in to the so called "unethical publicity" of his "demise" just because I watched a brain-numbing movie. I'm just going by instinct when I say that it wouldn't have been possible to play a character so unsettling unless one completely threw himself off balance.
I feel that a great actor needs to be an average man - one who cannot be aped. Such people can easily slip into different roles, be it the sharp-edged-but-vulnerable, slick-but-tormented, complex characters like Tom Ripley, or the heroic, inspirational ones like James J. Braddock, or the simple endearing ones like Guido Orefice from 'Life is Beautiful'. I feel that they are the smart ones, the ones who will last. It goes without saying that Tom Hanks is my favourite - the gentle-looking average man whose brilliance lies in his ability to mould himself to any role – A genius without any off screen presence whatsoever.
But only once in a rare while do you come across a performance that dazzles you beyond belief and promises to haunt you long enough. It can only belong to a distinctly different way of thinking, because any effort to do otherwise would make it understandable, and therefore less predictable. If that’s how the character ought to be, imagine an actor thinking, feeling, and functioning within that paradigm. The Joker shocks you into submission, and though it is a character that has nothing to do with reality, is able to drain you off all ‘human’ emotions. I don’t know of a word that can describe such a performance.
It’s clear that Tom Hanks has had a star-studied career, full of fantastic performances shining bright among the many other acting careers. But Ledger will always be the shooting star that shone brighter than all others, albeit very briefly.
May he rest in peace.
