HEATH LEDGER MOVIES
One writer. Six films. In a row. Pray for her
HARD TO BELIEVE, but it’s been ten years since Heath Ledger left us. With a documentary about the great Australian actor on the horizon, it seemed like the right time to look at the films that made him such an indelible star in such a short space of time. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have done it with a hangover.
1.15pm 10 Things I Hate About You
–– I was going to start this earlier because I know that Christopher Nolan movies are really long and The Dark Knight is going to warp my schedule, but then I went to a Christmas party and ruined my life. So here I am, feeling 100 years old and watching Ledger in the bloom of youth. He’s 19 here, basically a child, stabbing toads in the biology lab and wearing the handsome face I remember from the pages of magazines pinned to the door of every girl’s locker at my high school in 1999. I hated high school and everyone in it, so seeing it again in my fragile physical state gives me something close to PTSD. Julia Stiles does not help. Only Allison Janney talking about quivering members can save us.
3pm A Knight’s Tale
–– Somewhere between Paul Bettany’s naked arse and Mark Addy sewing a tunic out of a curtain it occurred to me that Ledger’s charisma has fooled everyone into liking bad films. This is a bad film! And very long! As I lie in a dark room cursing the clapping of the crowd and the sound of the big jousting sticks smashing into metal armour, I wonder what happened to Shannyn Sossamon, who seems so deeply ’90s. I also realise the pizza place has been open for hours and I have not ordered anything.
6pm Ned Kelly
–– A Knight’s Tale broke the two-hour barrier and then I needed a nap. By now, I’m starving. Even watching Heath eat potato and wombat stew cannot put me off any longer. By the time the Kelly gang have to shoot their own horse for food, my pizza has arrived and my hangover is reaching its climax. Nduja is the finest topping, but it will now forever remind me of horse blood dripping off Heath’s outlaw beard and an accent I think is… Irish?
8.15pm Brokeback Mountain
–– I haven’t paid for the Masterclass videos that all podcasts try to sell us, but I’m pretty sure Kevin Spacey would just tell me that good acting is just mumbling. In which case, Ledger excels. I try and find the subtitles, but Amazon Video doesn’t have any. Even without hearing whatever it is he’s saying, this is one of the most romantic movies ever made about having sex with someone because it’s freezing outside. I have stories about waiting for night buses in February that have the same gist but fewer moustaches.
10.45pm The Dark Knight
–– 152 minutes, Christopher Nolan! “This is a goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation!” says Gyllenhaal at one point in Brokeback Mountain, and I can’t help thinking about it now, watching Ledger lick his clown lips and skip around in his nurse’s outfit when I know I have hours to go before I can pass out. Did you know he only licked his lips to keep the scar prosthetic on his face? I learned that hours later in...
1.45am I Am Heath Ledger
–– The only time I questioned how much I would get on with Heath Ledger was while watching this documentary when his childhood friend said Ledger’s favourite place on Earth was Burning Man — the worst place on Earth. Aside from that, I think we could have been pals. “Do people sense their own mortality?” one asks. “If anyone did, it was Heath.” It’s 3am and I do, mate. I do right now.
I AM HEATH LEDGER IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD