I'll get it out of the way first that I thought Heath Ledger gave the best performance of his career in this movie. He displayed immense versatility and complexity all while remaining tightly bound within this twitchy Joker persona. The brilliance of his performance was in its understatedness. He seemed like he might explode out of his skin at any moment. Ledger was able to portray this weird, understated brand of villainy without resorting to being cartoonish.

My primary concern, which I wonder if other people share, is that his performance will be fetishized because of his untimely death. I personally had a morbid desire to see what about this performance drove him to insomnia and depression, which as I understand indirectly contributed to his accidental death by creating the need for him to be on so many medications. Was this reasonable of me? No! It's weird and gross to want to see a movie partially for that reason. But I felt that pull in my gut all the same.

I wonder if people will watch this over and over, or venerate it unnecessarily, because it may be considered his magnum opus, his stroke of brilliance before his sad departure. His performance is really utterly fascinating, and I know this is beating a dead horse, but I wonder how we'd take it if he hadn't met an untimely end. Any thoughts?