It’s one of many indelible, demented moments in “The Dark Knight.”
The Joker has just wreaked peculiar and devastating havoc on Gotham City’s Major Crime Unit headquarters. Ripping through the streets in a stolen police cruiser, he pokes his head out the window. Ah, freedom. He looks like a mad dog lapping air.
Only this Joker knows no master, no dog whisperer.
When people ask whether it’s sad to see Ledger, who died of an accidental overdose in January, my initial response has been “no.” The sensitive soul who made the anguish of a racist’s son in “Monster’s Ball” (2001) and the pining misery of a cowpoke in “Brokeback Mountain” (2005) so rending is nowhere in sight.
Were this “The Shining,” someone might say, “Heath’s not here, Mrs. Torrence.” Neither are any remnants of that other Joker, Jack Nicholson.
But of course it’s tragic.
And of course, the actor who rummaged deep to find fresh ways to capture his characters’ truths is there beneath the freak face-paint and disturbing tics. He has a whine-pitched voice and a way of moving his tongue in his mouth that suggest a congenital case of dry mouth.
Ledger’s turn as the arch-villain in Christopher Nolan’s exquisitely grim ride is something to honor. Yet as singular a feat as it is, it is not the only standout in a season typically known for action, not acting.
Come summer, we expect explosions and jaw-dropping special effects. We hope for fleet storytelling that owns us for a Saturday night, but not necessarily longer than that. We buy the tickets and pray for a ride.
Seldom do we expect our blockbusters to surprise us with acting, too. (That’s why the first sight of Johnny Depp’s slurry Jack Sparrow was such a welcome revelation.)
Starting with Robert Downey Jr.’s crazysexycool portrayal of Tony Stark in “Iron Man” — still the most fun to be had this summer — there have been a handful of turns that have quelled Hollywood’s performance anxieties. You know: those nagging worries that blockbusters, by their nature, can’t offer a setting for gemlike performances.
There’s talk Ledger may receive a posthumous Academy Award for his volatile, calibrated depiction of Gotham’s worst nightmare in a city bedeviled by bad dreams.
It’s a long stretch between now and awards season, and fall brings the prestige movies that tend to own critics’ top- 10 lists.
Still, at this juncture, consider adding Jason Bateman to a shortlist of supporting-actor nominees. He’s the super glue in Will Smith’s strange and fun superhero flick, “Hancock.”
As Ray Embrey, the public relations rep with a conscience, Bateman brings an acute awareness to what could have been a rube of a straight man. The way he plies his understated laugh lines isn’t as manic as Downey’s fast-quipping industrialist, but it’s nearly as agile.
Downey suggests what Cary Grant might have been, were he making flicks in the age of tent-pole fare. There is an insouciant swiftness to his delivery. It is the golden stuff of the screwball comedy. But it’s not just his grasp of the music of snappy writing. Downey’s Stark strides through spaces — casinos, laboratories, war zones — like a man who owns the world.
Discussing acting, director Mike Nichols once told The Denver Post: “None of us are very good at telling the dancer from the dance.”
Indeed, in the amazing danse macabre that is “The Dark Knight,” Ledger is not alone in giving a dynamic performance. Christian Bale, one of the most deliberate, uncompromising actors of his generation, has changed for good and dark our understanding of Bruce Wayne/Batman.
During the summer, art houses often become the refuges of craft when the awesome crashes, funky creatures or comedic yuks become too much. We expect fine performances in humbly budgeted fare.
So fans of the NBC-TV series “Homicide: Life on the Streets” won’t be surprised by Melissa Leo’s turn in “Frozen River” (opening in mid-August). Nor will art-house denizens. She has done potent work in “21 Grams” and “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.”
She plays a mother who, along with a young Mohawk woman, smuggles illegal immigrants across the New York- Canada border.
It’s hardly a surprise that Emma Thompson shines in “Brideshead Revisited” (opening later this month). Although “shine” is not the proper word for Lady Marchmain, the spiritually righteous, utterly destructive matriarch. One character says of the Lady of Brideshead that when she’s no longer around, she still permeates the place. The same is true of Thompson.
For a time it looked as if Meryl Streep also would join the parade of fellas doing great work in big flicks.
Given her string of consistently fine appearances, audiences had every right to expect something exceptional from her turn as Donna in “Mamma Mia!”
Streep turns out to be no match for the triumvirate who brought the megasmash to the stage and now to the screen: director Phyllida Lloyd, writer Catherine Johnson and producer Judy Craymer.
“I feel I’m very much the gatekeeper on all things ‘Mamma Mia!’ ” Craymer told a reporter not long ago. “I felt it was incredibly important to control the rights and incredibly important to control the project.”
That will to re-create the play in every way has robbed the film of greater possibility.
After all, Streep’s less was so much more in “The Devil Wears Prada.” Miranda Priestly’s “that’s all” was uttered softly but carried the force of a Louisville Slugger.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com; also: blogs.denverpostcom/madmoviegoer
