Losing yourself
My first acting teacher told me that you have to keep something of yourself (I think it was 90/10, give 90% to the character and keep 10% of yourself). This is excellent advice especially since if you're any good at all at acting you'll at some point find a character you're playing bleeding over into your own life and personality. It's the reason actors end up dating their costars so often. It's also the reason actors are often crazy, or at least assumed to be crazy.
Heath Ledger is a very good actor, and his Joker was great, and while I'm not trying to say that he's crazy, I don't think it was Oscar caliber work. He played a crazy killer with no motivation what-so-ever. I know it's cliche but actors need to know what their characters motivation is, and the Joker is a character without any motivation. That's not a character that allows for an especially emotionally nuanced portrayal, in fact it's pretty one dimensional. He died tragically, and perhaps deserves a posthumous Oscar both for making the Joker nuanced at all and because he didn't win the one he deserved for Brokeback Mountain, but I am saying that his acting in Dark Knight didn't take my breath away, his acting has taken my breath away, but not in this movie.
Cristian Bale, by the way, is a very good actor, who, it's said, doesn't keep anything of himself. People say that he becomes a completely different person (off camera I mean, since obviously he becomes a different person on camera). Of course, I'm not trying to say that he's crazy either. He had the more three dimensional character and he did very well with it is all. Of course it's kind of hard to see the emotionally nuanced acting when the man is wearing a mask over his eyes for half the film so I don't think anyone is going to be getting any Oscars (for their acting in this film).
Still, when I was watching the movie I totally lost myself. My friend tells me she was watching and she knew they couldn't have killed Gordon, because he wasn't commissioner yet. I should have known that too. I know enough Batman to know that Gordon was commissioner. Then Harvey Dent has gasoline running down the side of his face and I'm so caught up in the story, I should know what's coming, I know enough Batman to know about Two Face, but I don't even realize what's coming. That story had me rapt from beginning to end even though I know Batman. Maybe I have a tendency to let myself get lost in a story more than most people, and maybe this story was particularly compelling for a lot of reasons, but at least one of those reason is convincing actors.
Heath Ledger is a very good actor, and his Joker was great, and while I'm not trying to say that he's crazy, I don't think it was Oscar caliber work. He played a crazy killer with no motivation what-so-ever. I know it's cliche but actors need to know what their characters motivation is, and the Joker is a character without any motivation. That's not a character that allows for an especially emotionally nuanced portrayal, in fact it's pretty one dimensional. He died tragically, and perhaps deserves a posthumous Oscar both for making the Joker nuanced at all and because he didn't win the one he deserved for Brokeback Mountain, but I am saying that his acting in Dark Knight didn't take my breath away, his acting has taken my breath away, but not in this movie.
Cristian Bale, by the way, is a very good actor, who, it's said, doesn't keep anything of himself. People say that he becomes a completely different person (off camera I mean, since obviously he becomes a different person on camera). Of course, I'm not trying to say that he's crazy either. He had the more three dimensional character and he did very well with it is all. Of course it's kind of hard to see the emotionally nuanced acting when the man is wearing a mask over his eyes for half the film so I don't think anyone is going to be getting any Oscars (for their acting in this film).
Still, when I was watching the movie I totally lost myself. My friend tells me she was watching and she knew they couldn't have killed Gordon, because he wasn't commissioner yet. I should have known that too. I know enough Batman to know that Gordon was commissioner. Then Harvey Dent has gasoline running down the side of his face and I'm so caught up in the story, I should know what's coming, I know enough Batman to know about Two Face, but I don't even realize what's coming. That story had me rapt from beginning to end even though I know Batman. Maybe I have a tendency to let myself get lost in a story more than most people, and maybe this story was particularly compelling for a lot of reasons, but at least one of those reason is convincing actors.
posted by Beth at
3:56 PM
1 Comments:
I think the most important performance in the film is by Gary Oldman as the Commissioner. Even though in my head I knew it was him, at times he was so much someone else that I questioned it. Pretty amazing.
I don't know if we can say for sure that the joker didn't have any motivation. I imagine that Heath knew the real story of how his face got like that. (How cool was that, by the way, when you heard the second story after partly rolling your eyes at the first one. There is no story! Or it changes with his mood. Or he has split personalities. Whatever it is, it's interesting!)
> perhaps deserves a posthumous Oscar both for making the Joker nuanced at all and because he didn't win the one he deserved for Brokeback Mountain
That's a good way to put it. He was UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE in Brokeback. Heath's performance and the scenery and the score WERE that movie. It's not a great movie, but most of what is great about it was Heath. And since the man gave so much of himself to this part, so much that he had a hard time finding himself again, I feel like we should honor him somehow. An Oscar might not be the right way though considering how private he was. It might be something we all do personally.
I'm not sure what to say about Christian Bale. I'm always taken a little bit out of the movie when he is on screen. Maybe that is BECAUSE he doesn't keep his 10%. Maybe there is something about that tether that helps me buy in as the viewer. Maybe I need those glimpses into the actor...
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