or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain

To the topic at hand. Before losing control at the wheel, I planned to use the Carter as a comparison but my hands greased and the wheel in front slipped while the wheels beneath slid but I've tightened the grip and the machine once again obeys, for how long I can't say but for now while the clutch feels willing I'll take the road a time more.

Visually the movie tears your eyes out and soaks them in torrential cityscape and the shock of fiery skyscraping lights clashing with cold, cold dark night runs a sensation quick and brisk up your retinas into your brain and through your body's rest. Explosions or calm the city envelops. When buildings burst you feel the city lurch as a sentient thing. Before and after the silence cannot cover the breathing the heart of the city that beats and pulses, pulsates and vibrates, the blood behind the life of the film.

What you hear -- dialogue that resonates/from Bale and Eckhart even Freeman and Caine cliches don't clatter to the floor/instead the deliveries give old truisms new pace and relevance and the audience responds in turn. What you hear -- explosions and shots and shouts and screams that fit within the scope and time and place/nothing extraneous nothing overdone or overwrought/indeed silence reigns at time the score -- exquisitely rendered -- stands alone, carrying heavy moments alone, Atlas with Gotham City comfortably between his shoulders.

Bale Eckhard Freeman Caine. Ledger. The much-anticipated, hyped, talked-about, acclaimed, all those and similar and not-so-similar remarks on the performance of the late Heath Ledger. I'm almost afraid to comment when someone dies there's so many emotions and thoughts and perceptions and perspectives that surround (not necessarily cloud, mind you, but simply surround in a neutral, inevitable sense) and I'm no different. They gave me the stick to bite down upon while the Ledger off and does his thing on the screen and I'm still biting. In a case like this it might be difficult to separate the two when someone dies that tragedy whether you've seen it firsthand or second or third or whether you've merely heard about it whether you like or love or hate or don't even know the deceased and dead and passed on and along you feel a sort of pang not pain or hurt maybe not even sympathy but just something. If it's a hero, Jesus, weep. If it's a villain you can't help but feel for him... Right?

For me, wrong. Wrong wrong wrong! Do I feel for him Heath guilty guilty guilty as charged! Might my opinion be unfairly biased towards support? Of course of course there can be no other way. But the Joker? He spooked me but he prompted admiration completely disparate and disassociated with the Ledger all that aura of death and departure. It's the acting it's the craft it's the art Heath Ledger as the Joker was (is!) an artist. The mannerisms the twitches and tongue-laps the voice the grating drawl the teeth-bared hyena laugh of the insane and wrapped and bundled in padded white walls he mastered. Perhaps Depp could have done it perhaps Pitt did it once before perhaps Nicholson (Nicholson!) but here that's all irrelevant. Because here is Ledger. Not actors great of past and present. But Ledger, Heath.

And grant me a 180 degree turn on this wild and unpredictable ride. Because it cannot be avoided. It was more than the acting more than the forms and faces you learn in classes and through experience. Because here Heath commanded our utmost attention at every scene. Screen presence what they I don't know who but someone calls it screen presence. And maybe an actor doesn't have to have died to wield it with such abandon -- obviously Ledger was alive during the filming so why can't I just attribute his magnetism to his acting abilities or his charm or charisma? Because he died. There's no running from that, there's no way around it. Much as you'd like (or not) to hide it, beneath the covers shoved in the corner behind the dresser under the rug, it's there. You can't judge his performance alone because you're given more than just the facts, more than just time and action on film, you're given the emotions that surround them, the press release the accolades from co-workers and despair and wails from family friends and fans. You don't know though you wish you did whether you can't turn away because he died or because he's just so damn good did he have it all along no did he turn it up in this one maybe maybe but I just don't know I just can't tell I don't know I don't damn know.

The case whatever it is whatever because he does what superstars can't some can carry films promote and sell them open at 250 300 million! but when they're onscreen they're so bright everyone and thing else shrivels up and dies. [Insert basketball analogy: Good player = leads team in scoring does not equal Great player = makes team better] Ledger it's all eyes on him but he doesn't steal the screen he's something else not a screen stealer too old to be an attention hog too beyond to be selfish self-absorbed he's beyond charismatic at this point he's myth but the legend allows room and Bale and Eckhart as well are heard and seen and felt.

You feel. Heath the crashes the burns the fires the blowing up and blowing out the fights the city the lights Ledger Ledger Ledger makes you feel.

I stumbled through the dark of the theater out into the bright of glaring shopping mall lights with all its clutter and clatter of people some just eating lunch or dinner or coffee or biscuits or something, some eagerly waiting to see what I've just seen. No producers no directors no actors or actresses told me what to take from that film. I took I what I saw and felt and heard and witnessed. Like Michelangelo's like Mozart Moliere Machiavelli Monet's, from beautiful art and craft and work here I took what I could from it/beauty. and Ledger.

Perhaps he she I or you them they those people can find lesson something applicable but it's nothing we haven't heard or seen or been told. Difference is we've never heard seen or been told it like this. and Ledger.