Ledger plays the anarchist in The Dark Knight, a performance built on physical tics, an unstable voice and a refusal to supply the character with a consistent backstory. The film gives him several contradictory accounts of his own past, and he plays each as if it were true at that moment, which is exactly what makes the character unreadable.
He was an Australian actor who moved from television to American film very young and spent his career deliberately avoiding the conventional leading man path, choosing difficult independent work alongside studio productions. He prepared for this role in isolation, keeping a journal in character, a process that has been widely documented since.
Recurring subjects: concealment, men whose surface is a deliberate construction, and performances built from physical detail outward. He worked in extreme specificity, developing a walk, a laugh and a set of gestures before anything else, and he was unusually willing to make an audience uncomfortable rather than entertained.
He won a posthumous Academy Award for the role, and the performance is regularly named among the finest in any genre film. His earlier work, particularly a restrained lead in a drama about two ranch hands, drew equal critical recognition, and his death at twenty eight ended a career that was visibly still expanding.
For viewers who want a genuinely unsettling antagonist. Suited to anyone approaching the superhero trilogy, and to those who should follow it with his dramatic work rather than stopping there.
