Why so serious?

“I am an agent of chaos.

“I show the schemers how pathetic they are when they try to control everything.”

- Heath Ledger as The Joker, The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan is a filmmaking genius. I can only hope to reach his caliber of skill one day. Having said that, The Dark Knight is a masterpiece. Together, Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale and Heath Ledger crafted the ultimate onscreen Batman tale. A hero is nothing without his villain, and The Joker is Batman’s definitive villain. He is his polar opposite and his mirror image. One’s existence depends on the existence of the other.

Make no mistake, Heath Ledger IS the Joker. There has not been an onscreen performance that truly captures the essence of the Joker until The Dark Knight. Did anyone really expect anything less? Batman Begins captured the essence of Batman, and it makes to sense to assume that the filmmakers, with their capable hands, would succeed in capturing the essence of one of fiction’s most misunderstood villains.

The Joker is not campy. The Joker does not dance to Prince on a float throwing out money. And more so, the Joker is not about the crazy smile. The smile is an accessory to the feature that truly defines the Joker: his eyes. What the Joker is, is a psychopath. While Batman represents Order and Justice, the Joker represents Chaos and Anarchy.

On that note, I’m glad I avoided the hype machine which seemed to be everywhere after Heath Ledger died. It was a good movie, but it wasn’t a good movie because the guy died. The role did not kill him; a bad combination of drugs killed him. “I warned him.” Really, Jack? Anyway, I knew the movie was going to be good three years ago upon leaving the theater after seeing Batman Begins. I knew the movie would be even better when Heath Ledger was first announced for the role of the Joker.

Not that I was a fan of Heath Ledger or anything. The only movies I’ve seen him in before this are The Patriot and………..The Patriot. A Knight’s Tale, Casanova and Brokeback Mountain aren’t the kind of movies I rush out to see in the theater, nor do they have a place in my Netflix queue. I think it was more so that I trusted the filmmakers’ assessment of him. They got it right when they said the Joker is not about the smile, he’s about the eyes. From that moment on, I knew all would be well. So in actuality, I didn’t go to this movie to see Heath Ledger’s final performance, as many did who normally may not have seen this movie until well after it came out on DVD. Why would the final performance of a previously welterweight actor who had just entered the middleweight ranks with his previous major role be such a big deal? And sitting in the theater last night I realized what I was watching: Heath Ledger’s first great performance.

Realizing that makes me sad for all the future great performances of his that we’ll missing out on. But it also makes me smile to think that someone so young could end their career on such a high note. How many people can truly say that? His last role could have been Casanova and no one would be talking about him right now. But people are going to be talking about his Joker for years and years. And it really is worth talking about. I remember reading the only bit of coverage I read after his death and it talked about how even Ledger himself was impressed with his performance. They would sit down and watch the footage that had been shot, and he would be completely blown away and say “Can we see that again?”

It’s a rare individual who can say that one of his favorite actors is himself.