Radio Australia Today Editorial

Heath Ledger gets the nomination.

23 January 2009

The news here in Australia this morning has been domminated by Heath Ledger officially getting the Oscar nomination for his role as the Joker in the Dark Knight film.

Ever since the movie came out last year, a single word has been accompanying every comment made about his performance, and that world is Oscar.

And rightly so. Heath Ledger, who is in relatively few scenes in the movie, steals the whole show. Take the scene where he walks unarmed into a meeting of mobsters and manages through a powerful speech to put the fear of death into them. And us. His lizard-like flicking tongue, darting eyes and apparently carelessly applied makeup all presenting a grotesque image that is as frightening as his delivery.

Fast forward to the scene where the Joker has to walk towards the camera in the middle of a Gotham City street as a building explodes in the background. The building is a hospital and the Joker is still wearing the nurse’s uniform that he wore to get through security. What does Heath Ledger do? He doesn’t just walk to the camera like most other actors. He skips. Like a little girl in a nurse’s costume, playing doctors, he skips. At once, he shows the Joker’s madness, inability to care and humour.

This morning we played a grab of his Joker on air with its raspy, American, gangsterish voice. Then we played an excerpt from an interview with Ledger.  The two voices could not have been more different. the real Ledger sounds so young, so cafe culture, so unformed. In that single juxtaposition we heard how good an actor he was, tranforming his voice box so as to be unrecognisable. Think about it. Nicole Kidman’s voice you will always know no matter what role she plays. Even Ledger’s magnificent predecessor as the Joker, Jack Nicholson, always has a bit of Jack in his voice no matter what role he plays. Ledger was different. He subsumed himself. He became his character and left nothing of himself to do it.

If Heath Ledger wins the Oscar, many will feel that it was a good decision. I know I will.

                                                                  – Phil