While I watch and love films like anyone else, I don't really invest that much in films or actors. I certainly didn't think I had much invested in Heath Ledger. He was good looking certainly, but I don't go much for that blonde tall type (Jake Gyllenhaal was much more my cup of tea) and I hadn't really watched most of his films.
And yet when I saw the news of his death on the front page of MidDay I felt just awful. It was the tragedy of someone young and talented dying, etc etc, sure, but I think this felt particularly bad just for one reason. Actors, I know, should never be associated just with one role, but when that role was Ennis del Maar in Brokeback Mountain and when it was done just so unbelievably well as Ledger did it, then you can't help yourself. I mean there is acting and acting well and then something beyond, and Ledger went that something beyond. Ennis was not an easy part, because he was so much less an overtly dramatic character than Jack Twist. Jack was extrovert and pushy and needy and he was the one who really would keep coming and going in the film. Ennis was the one who endured and he was who the film was really about. But there was so little to work on. Ennis does not show his feelings easily, he is buttoned down, laconic, shut away. And Ledger did all that brilliantly. Towards the end of the film he was hardly speaking, just mumbling, looking away and just conveying everything through the increasing tautness and despair pervading every long inch of Ennis' body. There are two scenes in particular. One the first parting, when he says nothing to do Jack directly, but as soon as he is gone, stumbles to a corner and starts retching in pure painful grief. But the one scene for me which blew everything away, which has to be one of the most painful scenes ever filmed was at the end with the shirts. If you haven't seen the film I am not going to apologise for a spoiler here because frankly you have no excuse for not seeing the film. And if you have you will remember it. It is almost at the end, after Jack has died, and Ennis pays a visit to Jack's parents for the first time. Jack's father is suspicious of him and not particularly friendly. Jack's mother is, perhaps because she has some inkling of what Ennis meant for him. She tells him to go to Jack's room and he does, and looks around a bit aislessly until his eye is caught by a familiar looking shirt in the cupboard. Its one of his which went missing after that one summer on Brokeback and which he thought lost. But he now realises that Jack took it and when he picks it up, he sees something more. Jack has worked one of his own shits into Ennis' shirt, back to back, sleeve inside sleeve, so their shirts at least can have the togetherness that Jack and Ennis never could. And Ennis walks down after that with the shirts in his hand and the expression on his face - the expression that comes despite him being an expressionless man - is simply too much to bear. He wordlessly indicates to Jack's mother that's he's taking the shirts, and she nods and that's when you realise she knew. The scene is almost wordless except for Jack's father muttering in the background but it is utterly and totally heartbreaking. I am tearing up just remembering it. And that was what Ledger created and what we have to be grateful to him for. In that performance and in that scene he showed two things at once: that two men can really love each other and that the closet can kill, both actually as in Jack's case and effectively as with Ennis. Jack is killed by the closet, and by the secrective, dangerous cruising it leads to. But Ennis is destroyed by the closet, and the way it forces you to kill the most important part of your life. Mid-Day's cover today referred to Ledger as having taken part in the gay cowboy film, and I suppose you could see Brokeback that way. Certainly the gay community owes the film, its director, writer and actors for forcing a change in how the gay community is viewed. But really in the end I think the film is less about being gay than about being closeted and how it can kill you. For showing that so incredibly, we will always have Hearth Ledger to thank. RIP. Vikram PS: The outpouring of emotion on many gay sites shows I'm hardly alone in feeling this. Towleroad has some really moving mails, so check this link: http://www.towleroad.com/2008/01/actor-heath-led.html And among them are a couple of mails that remembered his performance in the reviews that came out after Brokeback and a moving mail from today by a well respected film writer. But first this poem by e.e.cummings, written years ago, but which says it all today: Buffalo Bill's defunct who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat Jesus he was a handsome man and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death "Heath Ledger is just almost really beyond description as far as I'm concerned. He got inside the story more deeply than I did. All that thinking about the character of Ennis that was so hard for me to get, Ledger just was there. He did indeed move inside the skin of the character, not just in the shirt but inside the person. It was remarkable. Annie Proulx Heath Ledger's wrenching performance is the stuff of Hollywood history." Manohla Dargis, NY Times Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character. It is a great screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn. Stephen Holden, NY Times But maybe anyone would look thin next to Ledger's Ennis Del Mar. The actor hunches over and pulls his emotions under his canvas coat; he doesn't age so much as slowly cave in. That's fitting: Ennis is both ennobled and shamed by feelings he doesn't possess words to describe. ''This thing we have" is the closest he comes, and yet it's the only real part of his life, despite the damage left in its wake. Ledger turns the classic iconography of the Western male -- a cowboy hat pulled low, a measured drawl that says no more than it absolutely has to -- into protective coloring. The genius of the performance is in how little he shows and how much he suggests. Ty Burr, Boston Globe Both actors do memorable work, but Ledger has the better role, and he makes the strongest choices. He gives Ennis a voice and mannerisms that are utterly idiosyncratic, and then inhabits those choices psychologically, making sense of the locked-down speech, the haunted look and the strong but diffident manner. He completely transforms himself. It's a performance that was thought through in detail and then lived in the moment, and it's one of the most beautiful things in movies this year. Mick LaSalle, SF Chronicle Jack, a shade more comfortable with his nature, talks of getting a ranch together, but Ennis will have none of it: Stung by childhood memories of a rancher who lived with a man and got bashed for it, he fears he knows that exposure could kill them. In the classic Westerns, the cowboys were often men of few words, but Heath Ledger speaks in tones so low and gruff and raspy his words just about scrape ground, and he doesn't string a whole lot of those words together. Ennis' inexpressiveness is truly ...inexpressive, yet ironically eloquent for that very reason, as tiny glimmers of soul escape his rigid facade. Ennis says nothing he doesn't mean; he's incapable of guile, yet he erupts in tantrums the anger of a man who can't be what he is and doesn't realize the quandary is eating him alive. Ledger, with beady eyes and pursed lips, gives a performance of extraordinary, gnarled tenderness. Revolutionary. A film in which love feels almost as if it were being invented. - Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly More than any of the others, Ledger brings this film alive by going so deeply into his character you wonder if he'll be able to come back. Aside from his small but strong part in "Monster's Ball," nothing in the Australian-born Ledger's previous credits prepares us for the power and authenticity of his work here as a laconic, interior man of the West, a performance so persuasive that "Brokeback Mountain" could not have succeeded without it. Ennis' pain, his rage, his sense of longing and loss are real for the actor, and that makes them unforgettable for everyone else. Kenneth Turan, LA Times Ledger's magnificent performance is an acting miracle. He seems to tear it from his insides. Ledger doesn't just know how Ennis moves, speaks and listens; he knows how he breathes. To see him inhale the scent of a shirt hanging in Jack's closet is to take measure of the pain of love lost. As Jack told him once, "That ol' Brokeback got us good." It hits you like a shot in the heart. Peter Travers, Rolling Stone What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger. They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis's pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis's breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Ennis, dredging up a rusty but still useable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, said, "Time to hit the hay, cowboy. I got a go. Come on, you're sleepin on your feet like a horse," and gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off in the darkness. Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx Commentary by "SF Chronicle" film critic Mick LaSalle: In a little while, perhaps before you read this, the rest of the details will become known. Was it an accident? Was it suicide? Was there an unknown history of drug abuse? The answers to these questions will become part of the legend, and Heath Ledger will be enlisted into that ghoulish gallery of movie stars who, for one reason or another, died a good half-century ahead of schedule. But before that happens - before the false hand-wringing begins on the nightly entertainment shows - before the interviews with ex- girlfriends reveal unknown truths that are probably false - and before the grave diggers show up with their microphones and cameras and their heads that can't furrow in fake grief because of all the botox injections - it might be worthwhile to take a moment to remember why exactly this particular 28-year-old rates an obituary in every major newspaper on the planet today. Like few who ever lived, much less lived to be 28, Heath Ledger left behind moments and images that were guaranteed even Tuesday - even a week ago, when he was presumably healthy and had the world before him - to outlive his mortal life. When I got the news, I immediately flashed on one of them. In "Brokeback Mountain," having said goodbye to Jake Gyllenhaal after their summer together - which is the only thing they'll ever have in their lives, and they seem to know it - he walks stoically away, then enters the frame as he passes an alley. In the background is the sky. Limitless. He stops, enters the alley and becomes a silhouette. He puts his head against the wall and sobs, struggling to hide his face with his hat. He curses. He punches the wall. He yells angrily at someone who passes by and stops to look. And two seconds later we see him in close-up, looking boyish and yet somehow like the world has just closed up, standing at the altar getting married. ... Unlike most of his contemporaries, Ledger had an old-fashioned manliness - the kind that seems to have fled America and gone south in recent years, as far south as Australia. (He was born there, in Perth, in 1979.) But unlike most of the old-fashioned manly stars of America's macho period, Ledger was at his best playing men in turmoil, men in trouble, men suffering from deep wounds to the spirit. At 28, he had 25 prime casting years ahead of him. Just to be selfish for a minute, think of how that talent may have grown. The Hollywood of today doesn't nurture acting talent. That is, it doesn't look for roles that explore the actors' soul. But even accepting that, just by chance and the law of averages, just with a little dumb luck, Ledger should have had two or three or five or six more films in his life that challenged him the way "Brokeback Mountain" challenged him. I think that would have been Ledger's career, from here on out: A combination of OK movies in which he played men who were as magnificent as he looked. And better movies, in which he played men whose imposing physical presence and locked- down stoicism were a façade for an emotional life of desperation and helplessness. Instead of looking forward, we're forced to look back - to the fragile young man he played in "Monster's Ball," who shoots himself in a fit of anguish. Or to "Casanova" and those scenes when the great seducer discovers his capacity to love one woman. Or to movies like "Ned Kelly," those ones with nothing much to recommend them besides what I once called Ledger's "big-slab-of-a-guy magnetism." There's no way to make sense of this. No way to end an appreciation like this on an uplift when the news is so sad. If there's something positive to be said, it's that the best work Ledger left behind will last forever...."
