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?

I haven't had the chance to see Ledger's Joker yet. I'm looking forward to it for some of the reasons you mention. In an interview with Nicholson he said there was something unsettling about playing the Joker character, and supposedly he discussed that w/ Ledger. A great actor gets inside the character they're playing, and I'm not sure a truly gifted performance is possible without leaving something behind in the person playing the role.

I hope that the credit Ledger gets isn't simply hype because of his death. If it is his finest performance, then I think it will hold up despite the circumstances, it will receive even more scrutiny over time. Reading the so-far good reviews, I was happy for Ledger. I think any actor would want to go out on a 'high note'.

Reports did run that Nicholson warned Heath that the Joker was a dark place to go... These were later disproved as mere rumours when Nicholson countered by saying he'd never met the guy.

Besides, Heath's Joker is a lot darker and more psychpathic than Jack's protrayal.

I agree it's impossible to watch Ledger without a tinge of grief, sadness or perhaps loss, knowing we we do that this fine young actor is gone and this was his swansong. Well, actually his final performance will be in Gilliam's next movie, which hasn't come out yet, but this is the role that has the most porximity to his death.

It truly is a rivetting performance - probably (easily) the best villain since Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. (Voldemort just doesn't do it for me...)

But honestly, I really didn't find Heath's Joker as menacing as I would have liked. He's too funny and quirky and interesting to really terrify me or get under my skin like, say Hannibal Lecter did.

acd at IUB:

...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 ...

To clarify, Heath had completed shooting on this picture and was in the middle of shooting The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus (Terry Gilliam's next movie) when he died.

I believe his insomnia and depression had more to do with his break up with Michelle and the fact that he didn't get to spend Christmas with his little girl than the dark places he'd gone to for a role, even though that must have been a contributing factor.

I think the two key differences in the Ledger performance from Nicholson's are:

1. Nicholson, by the time he played the Joker, was such a massively established movie star presence -- that voice, those eyebrows, that toothy grin -- that there was no way he was going to totally irradicate Jack from the Joker (particularly given that in "Batman," Nicholson does about a half an hour with his regular face before getting the origin-acid bath as the Joker.)

Heath Ledger had made many films, and had a breakthrough with "Brokeback Mountain," but he was not yet a Brand Name Icon like Jack Nicholson.

It sure is hard to FIND Ledger in this Joker. He uses, for one thing, an entirely different voice from his "Brokeback Mountain" gutteral grunt (based, evidently, a bit on the Sling Blade character done by Heath's friend Billy Bob Thornton, his co-star in "Monster's Ball.") Heath's Joker's got a great, squirrely cackle of a vocal style. Constant lip-smacking and racoon eyes help complete the picture of a mad manchild.

2. "The Dark Knight" pretty much eschews being a "comic book movie for kids" in any way, shape or form. Nicholson's Joker was a psycho killer, but Warners hedged their bets on the violence in "Batman," so as to sell more happy meals. Nicholson spilled no blood.

Meanwhile, Heath's Joker wields knives and talks about how great it is to slowly kill people with knives and generally employs all manner of sadistic terror techniques on innocents.

Not quite fair, if "terror villainy" is the standard of comparison.

I'm glad we have both performances. Ledger proved himself again and again: "The Dark Knight" only fully comes to life when Ledger's Joker takes the stage.

P.S. "Batman Begins" evidently gave all those Batman fans who were "tired of the villains taking over the movies" exactly the Batman movie they wanted: a lengthy Batman origin story with rather "blah" villains played by rather blah actors (sorry, Liam.) Thus the focus stayed on Christian Bale's handsome, intense Bruce Wayne/Batman (and a decidedly starry cast of supporters, including Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman.)

But look what happened when Nolan deigned to put the Joker back in for the second movie: a zillion dollars. The talk of the world.

Maybe "Batman" IS about the villains.

As Hitchcock said: "The Better the Villain, the Better the Movie."

Villians don't come any better than the Joker.

I agree with all your (excellent) points.

For me, Heath's perf in Brokeback was less about grunting.(Billy Bob? Really? Well, that makes sense...)

It was more about the way country guys in the Australian outback (and perhaps in certain, similarly remote rural locations in the States) talk in a way that keeps their cards close to their chest.

In fact, the flies are so multitudinous and pesky in the Outback that you have to keep your lips close together when you speak if you don't want the buggers flying into your mouth.

So (US accent aside) all that mumbling and muttering Heath did in Brokeback was, for me, so utterly authentic and such Australian bushman-like behaviour, it just made me love his character even more; this repressed, tight-lipped loner.