THE DARK PRINCE

A Birthday rant
7/22/2008

By Mark Langton

(Excerpt of a letter to Neal)

Dear Neal:

I turn 55 today.

However, first things first:

Just saw "The Dark Knight" and can easily say I'm putting it up there with the 10 great American movies of all time, it was that good, Heath Ledger was that good, I loved it that much. Maybe I'm still just in the first flush of sobriety again and loving everything I do or taste or smell or see, but I know my mythic archetypes enough to know a GREAT performance when I see one, and a GREAT, mythical, fucking GREEK, sin-eating, biblical, personification of satan and christ-slammin' yarn when I see one, and this is one. Wow. It's got everything, man. I'm talkin' black, white, yin, yang, good, evil, ego, id, disney, picasso, fellini, tarantino...I shit you not. It's got it all.

Actually, the movie is mostly style -- ah, but what style! -- with Heath providing the only real substance. And that's what makes more than just a good movie: Heath Ledger's Joker...! oH..my...god. SPASTIC. Everybody said no one could live up to the hype after he died, but let me tell ya, he so far surpasses the hype that he prolly will leave most movie audiences in the dust. (The one I saw it with was.)

As usual, I was the only one laughing at most of the stuff I laughed at, except for the all-knowing Alicia laughing beside me, and me with that "Neal" laugh that somehow got imprinted on me over the years, that low, suggestive, knowing laugh that only begins to bring others into the secret, killing joke if they have the capacity to get it to begin with, fuck 'em if they don't GET the joke, and Oyes, I hear you in my ears allatime, Neal, and often in my own voice, the way young men put their stamp on each other when they've gone through the same fire. THAT blood, it runs, ran, through Ledger's veins, you can tell, at a glance, especially if you've tasted it, like Kobain, like Bruce -- he's one part James Dean (that spastic opening scene in "Rebel" when you realize the police siren that you hear is coming out of his mouth), one part Jerry Lewis in "Nutty Professor," one part Brando, another part Stuart Smalley (he seems, actually, to be imitating Al Franken), with Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, De Niro, Mr. Rogers, the dual(dueling)selves of Sam Shepard's "True West" thrown in ....He is the anti-Bozo, Pennywise the Clown, my own worst nightmare, a dream come true... and just the best fucking acting job I have seen in years.

There are two scenes that left me frozen in my seat, my mouth agape -- one, where he's facing off with Batman during an interrogation in a holding cell where you realize at the same time Batman does that he IS Batman, that he's more than just evil, his Joker is not a comic book villain out for money or self-interest, he just wants to see the WORLD BURN....!!! His simplicity is fascinating, and, as the movie goes on, that simplicity, in itself, becomes a grotesque.

The other scene is one shot, actually, that, in the words of one local reviewer, deserves to be "anthologized, YouTube-ized and immortalized": The Joker is in the foreground, walking toward the camera, playing (and really, that's the only word for it) with a bomb detonator; huge explosions are going on behind him as he walks toward us, stiff and happy and hobbling, like a toddler. He practically tosses the scene away, and if not for the mammoth explosions going on behind him, it could almost go unnoticed. He's a child, and this is pure id. The banality of evil. Convincing all who see it that at the heart of existence isn't creation at all, but chaos. Has to be. It may be the most chilling thing I've ever seen on film.

(to be cont'd)