To
date, Heath Ledger is the only posthumous best supporting actor Oscar winner. That
is not exactly the sort of honor an actor aspires to, but there is no getting
around it. The actor’s meteoric rise and tragically early demise are chronicled
in Adrian Buitenhuis & Derik Murray’s I
Am Heath Ledger (trailer
here),
which screens during the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.
Even
apart from his youthful twenty-eight years, Ledger’s death was especially sad.
He was a proud new parent, whose already red-hot career was poised to go stratospheric
with the opening of The Dark Knight,
featuring his Oscar-winning turn as the Joker. In compiling I Am Heath Ledger, the latest
installment in Spike’s “I Am” series, Buitenhuis & Murray were blessed in
the bounteous video footage Ledger compulsively shot of himself and his mates
and cursed with the reticence of those closest to him. Do not hold your breath
waiting for Michelle Williams to appear.
Presumably,
they also made do with whatever ground rules were offered to them. For
instance, Naomi Watts only talks about Ledger as someone who always supported
fellow Australians who came to Hollywood, never mentioning their relationship. At
least, his parents and siblings were willing to reflect on Ledger’s early
years.
Frankly,
IAHL is rather disappointing when
compared to its predecessor, IA Chris Farley, because it is dramatically less forthcoming. While Farley’s friends
and family directly address his addiction issues and the role they played in
his ultimate death, Ledger’s demons and the circumstances surrounding his death
are completely whitewashed from his Spike profile. Anyone watching the film
completely cold will be baffled as the how a healthy actor who played a surfer
on more than one occasion could suddenly pass away.
On
the other hand, it is striking how Ledger built such an accomplished reputation
on a comparatively small body of work. Most of the doc’s cinematic focus is
reserved for hits like The Patriot
and A Knight’s Tale, his breakout in 10 Things I Hate About You, and
critically acclaimed awards-winners, like The
Dark Knight (the Neocon War-on-Terror allegory) and Brokeback Mountain,
with passing mention given to a handful of other releases. Somehow, his
Vatican-set horror film The Order gets
short-shrift (so maybe we’ll shoehorn in a review sometime for the sake of
fairness, at absolutely no extra charge to you the reader).
