On Friday afternoon, in a fit of complete and utter “nothing to do”-ness, I rented The Dark Knight on my AppleTV. I decided it was finally time to buy into the hype and see what all the fuss was about. As someone who really enjoyed Batman Begins (even saw it in the iMax) I had a feeling I’d love The Dark Knight just as much. After all, people have been relatively shameless in calling for it to be named best movie ever and Heath Ledger to be named Pope, King, and Jesus Christ’s direct descendent.
Are you people out of your damn minds?
After watching The Dark Knight, which can only be called the most overly-long movie I’ve ever seen, I can only assume that people calling for Ledger’s coronation into the annals of great Hollywood performances did so because the man is dead and will be for the foreseeable future, and they felt a debt of obligation to lift a decent (but certainly not great) actor to a level he didn’t acquire while he was alive.
Ledger was good, but his performance was nothing remarkable. In a cast of stars in a pretty good (but not great movie) he was definitely right there with the rest, but I think the people who loved his performance as much as they did were more caught up in the myth of Heath than the performance he was giving.
A smart man I know responded thusly when I mentioned I didn’t get the accolades for Ledger:
Agreed. All actors know the easiest roles are playing psychos.
He’s 100% right, and for that reason alone, Ledger’s performance is utterly forgettable. Another over-the-top cookie cutter psycho. He may have brought a new dimension to the Joker character and elevated him from campy to evil, but that isn’t worthy of the praise he’s received and if he was alive, we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now.
You’ll never convince me otherwise.