A few more thoughts on Ledger

On the drive home from the airport last night, getting closer to my house, my car passed a corner around which an unusually large number of people holding video and still cameras and such was camped out, and then a bunch of "news" vans. An unusual sight in the general vicinity of my residence. And then I remembered.

"Oh, shit." I thought. "They're waiting for Michelle Williams to get home."

Williams was reportedly overseas shooting a film when her former partner Heath Ledger died, and left the set to return to the States almost immediately. To a home where she would find these, um, dedicated professionals.

It's difficult for me to write anything about Heath Ledger, still, without reflecting on the awfulness of the old-and-new media circus surrounding his death, and I suppose that while spitting out a little bit of my anger could be useful (at least to me and those of similar inclination), harping on it would have me ending up as self-righteous as anybody on the never-heard-of-him/who-cares-about-self-destructive-celebrities side of the fence. And as exercises in futility go, counseling the world that it ought to keep its yap shut until all the facts are in is a noble one, but it's an exercise in futility nonetheless.

A.O. Scott has a fine, dispassionate appreciation of Ledger in the Times today, in which he argues—in his typically cogent and understated fashion—that we ought not confuse the performer with the man. I'm with him on that. "Mr. Ledger's work will outlast the frenzy. But there should have been more." I'm with him on that, too. Thinking about the work of his I was particularly taken with, I was drawn back to his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain. A predictable choice on my part, I suppose, but with good reason. Part of what made his work in the film so wonderful was how he took the stillness, the solitariness, of the commonplace Western hero and deepened it, twisted it up, made these things the characteristics not of a heroic figure but finally of a man who could not face up to what he was. (At least until the film's devastating final scene.) And how in doing so he made you feel FOR him, rather than against him, the whole time.

Back in September, at the time Ledger and Williams had decided to live apart and Ledger departed Brooklyn, I had a little fun with the media flurry around the breakup, being flip and hoping that this would spell the end of a certain stripe of Brooklyn chic. It seemed amusing at the time, I guess. In that post, in a similarly flip fashion, I recounted my only sighting of Ledger in the burg.

It was over Thanksgiving weekend, 2005, and he was sitting a couple of rows ahead of myself, my wife, and my buddy and fellow film writer Aaron Hillis, at a screening of the Lee van Cleef/Tomas Milian-starring spaghetti western The Big Gundown. He wore one of those knit caps that men of my age are so befuddled by, and was seated in the sort of contemplative scrunch I myself used to get into as a much thinner man when I attended movies stag. In my blog post last year I wrote, fliply, "I reflected that his choice of film spoke well of him, and that living in Brooklyn would be good for his education." Last night my wife brought up the sighting, and said, "You know, he was out doing what a movie actor ought to be doing—learning about movies." Indeed. And skateboarding ahead of us after the movie let out, were one to look at him a certain way (which I sure wasn't at the time), one could have discerned some of the solitariness he brought to Ennis. Or am I now doing some romanticization of my own here? I can't really say.

Rest in peace, sir.

Comments

[bill]

That's the only kind of piece anybody should be writing about Ledger at this point. Good job.

And he is the primary reason "Brokeback Mountain" is as memorable as it is.

[Chad Channing]

My only wish for Heath Ledger is that he just kind of went to sleep and died inside of a dream. I hope he didn't feel any fear or sadness, and I hope he didn't feel alone. The thought of someone, anyone, dying alone in a dark room, unable to call for help, maybe even thinking of his daughter and knowing that he was never going to see her again, makes me feel so blue that the words slip out of my hands. As for the whole He-Was-An-Actor-Who-Gives-A-Shit Crowd, all I can say is that if you got any enjoyment out of his performaces or his movies, then the least you can do is tip your metaphorical hat and think something nice about his little girl, who is now without a dad, forever, until the end of her life. And that's what most important here, that a little girl lost her dad before she got to really know him. It's no consolation, but at least when she gets older she'll be able to meet him once again through the movies he made, and that's where she will get to know her dad as best as she ever will, in a dark room, bathed in glowing light.

[Stephen]

For a reason of which I'm not entirely aware, I tend not to post comments on the many blogs I read, despite frequent strong opinions. Perhaps I enjoy the distance. I don't know. Nevertheless, I feel it's worth pointing out that - to me, at least - the two best Heath Ledger tributes I've read are here, on one page. Thanks, Glenn and Chad.

And Heath.

[Jane]

Can't help but wonder why no one reached out to help this beautiful human being, in his time of need. A professional; psychiatrist, or otherwise, could have brought this incredible gift back to a position of focus and realization. Surrounded by so many, whom should have sensed the cry for help, why did no one hear???