Ang Lee had called him a “young Brando.” John Travolta called him “my actor.” Tributes poured in from Hollywood as the Australian prime minister mourned the loss of a deeply talented native son and the White House postponed an event that might have been construed as exploiting Heath Ledger’s death likely caused by an accidental prescription drug overdose.
I can’t think of an actor whose death has affected me so deeply. Last Tuesday was one of those moments that reminds you that there is no reason or logic in the cosmos, merely bright and beautiful stars interspersed with dark matter that eventually burn themselves out.
I was not the most ardent fan; I saw only three of Ledger’s films. But I found his performance as Ennis Del Mar in the epic Brokeback Mountain — a study in quiet, lonely, dignified, protracted pain soothed intermittently by sublime moments of intimacy — was as soaring as the film’s Santaolalla soundtrack. Some criticized the film for lack of realism — the initial physical episode between Ennis and Jack was indeed implausibly executed — but the performances rang true. They stuck in your head, made you think and feel.
It was a film that made many uncomfortable. In January 2006, Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam noted that the it wasn’t meeting box office predictions because “[f]irst and foremost, outside of major cities, many Americans remain jittery at best and disapproving at worst of homosexuality.” (Never mind that Brokeback had just been named Best Picture by the Iowa Film Critics Society.) I myself never saw it in a theater. My film-buff son almost always selects our viewing fare, and at 15 at the time he didn’t suggest this one. I rented the DVD when it came out and he watched it before I had a chance to do so.
“It’s not a ‘gay cowboy’ film,” he announced matter of factly. “It’s a love story.” I watched it with him and my then-teenage daughter, all of us blown away by its intensity and courage.
