Heath Ledger: In Memoriam

The tragedy of Heath Ledger isn't specifically that he was young, beautiful and talented — though the unexpected death of such an icon is always tragic, in a general sense. The true tragedy of Ledger's apparent overdose is that his contribution to culture transcended mere Hollywood. Ledger accomplished something most actors only can only wish for, or delude themselves into thinking with Indiewood prestige pictures: He helped reshape the political landscape through art.

Brokeback Mountain was, and is, a cultural touchstone. It was championed by several gay rights organizations and activists as an accurate, sensitive portrayal of the closeted gay experience. In response, the conservative media machine churned out its usual condemnations of Hollywood's "political agenda" and lack of "mainstream values." The conservative objection wasn't to the movie itself, mind you — it was that they, and thus America, "didn't want to see a gay cowboy movie." Throughout the winter of 2005 and 2006, Brokeback Mountain was trotted out by newstalk programs to introduce a shoutfest between progressives and conservative commentators over gay rights. Almost without exception, the conservative had not seen the movie, but knew in his God-fearing gut that Hollywood was insidiously homosexualizing America.

The responses were so obvious even Alan Colmes couldn't miss them. First, how can you condemn a movie you haven't even seen? Second, what are you so scared of? And third, do you really have so much contempt for your audience that you can't let them judge for themselves? MSNBC commentator Tucker Carlson unwittingly stumbled upon the best conservative argument against this hypothetical Brokeback Mountain: He admitted that "he's heard it's good," complaining that "[A]t some point, Hollywood should give up its mission as a kind of, you know, evangelist for a political persuasion and just shut up and make the movie."

Had Tucker Carlson actually seen Brokeback Mountain, he would have know that that's exactly what director Ang Lee did: eschew political evangelism and just tell the story. Brokeback Mountain presents homosexuality as something that just is. Despite the movie poster's declaration that "Love is a Force of Nature," the film itself offers a more complex view of Jack and Ennis' relationship: Jack is more naturally disposed to homosexuality, whereas Ennis is moved by a combination of desire, loneliness and affection. The character contrast offers no concrete "explanation" of homosexuality, and thus it carries none of the political baggage that inevitably accompanies explanations. In other words, who we are is a complex potion of nature, nurture and circumstance.

Similarly, Brokeback defied Hollywood's conventional presentation of homosexuals and its polarizing politics as well. Many jokes were lobbed at the "gay cowboys" trope, but Ennis and Jack are verisimilar, literary characters unique to a time and place. Brokeback does not queenify its cowboys into parodies of homosexuals, nor does it shy away from the disgrace that gnaws at homosexuals whose masculine code shames gayness. It does not condescendingly celebrate homosexuality as something "enlightened;" it does not play to the vanity of liberal guilt.

Instead, Brokeback Mountain is a tragic romance as old as Shakespeare, but with two men at its center. This being the movies, of course, two Hollywood hunks breathe life to the story. Jake Gyllenhaal had only recently become a star of summer blockbusters; his roots are in dark independent films. However, Heath Ledger came to Brokeback Mountain from the opposite route, finding stardom in mainstream hits Ten Things I Hate About You and A Knight's Tale, then descended into a small, dark roles like that of the suicidal son in Monster's Ball. Admirably, rather than cash in on his billion-dollar looks, Ledger balanced his career with mainstream moneymakers and challenging "actorly" roles. Ledger starred in a few bombs (The Four Feathers, The Order), but he consistently garnered good reviews for his performances.

Brokeback Mountain elevated Heath Ledger above his hunky peers. Not only did he take a role most would consider career suicide, he imbues Ennis Del Mar with a complexity and depth out of range of most young actors. Ledger's detail gives Ennis a literary uniqueness. Ennis' low, almost guttural grumble comes literally from deep inside, a perfect expression of his buried turmoil. Ledger's method creates great supporting performances: He hunches slightly at the shoulders and shields his face in the collars of his coats and underneath his hat — Ledger literally hides from his co-stars, forcing them to engage him just to get through a scene, just as Jack and Alma try to penetrate Ennis' emotional shell. Other times, Ledger is greatly generous with his screenmates, dipping into slapstick while carrying two children and a package of diapers, showing a dry wit that frustrates both the characters and the audience — why won't he just be like that all the time? Ledger's relaxed but rugged physicality gives him a silent charisma that draws people to him, whether he's fishing in a mountain stream, tending to a child or drowning away the day in a bar. But Ledger can also be an intensely physical presence, which gives Ennis a frightening edge: The violence Ledger brings to the first tent scene is shocking, yes, but it also lays bare Ennis' fears: of loneliness both on the mountain and at home, of marriage and his expected fatherhood, of providing for a family without secure employment, of his own struggle with sexual identity.

Ledger emphasizes Ennis' inability to cope with intimacy by delivering rebukes with a sharp, glareful pragmatism: "Bottom line is, we're around each other and this thing, it grabs hold of us again, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and we're dead." Ennis' self-consciousness and sensitivity results in an unending shame that he spends his whole life hiding. This is the key to Ledger's performance and, ultimately, to the entire movie — the film isn't solely about Ennis' gayness, but his inability to open himself to anyone at all. He's just a fellow human being.

Thus, the audience's sympathies aren't with Ennis' "condition," they're with him — whether the audience is gay, straight or whatever. Ennis just is, and Ledger lets the audience connect with him — no matter his faults, one of which isn't his homosexuality. Brokeback Mountain's "statement," if it has one at all, is universal and human: The most difficult thing in the world is to love. Ennis' repressed homosexuality, as communicated by Ledger, isn't the cause of his problems — it's the world's problem with him. Part of the tragedy is that his fears are founded: Jack's queerness does get him killed; Ennis' seemingly unwanted marriage does fall apart. Ultimately, Ennis' self-imposed repression isn't the result of emotional weakness, but his understanding that the romantic world of Brokeback Mountain cannot be lived in the real world at the bottom of the hill. That's a tragedy so universal that any high school freshman who has read Romeo and Juliet can understand it.

This universalism is the gateway to Brokeback's anti-homophobia theme. The theme isn't preached; it naturally emerges from logical events in the story, not shoehorned in to manipulate the audience. After taking this journey with Ennis and Jack, the audience is repulsed by Jack's brutal beating with a tire iron, in the same way we're angered when Tybalt slays Mercutio. We sympathize with Juliet's desire to run off with her rose of another name, but we understand why they can't; we sympathize with Ennis and Jack's desire for a fishing trip in Wyoming, but understand when Ennis warns that it could get them killed. The love story template demystifies homosexuality and bonds it to the universal.

But, Brokeback doesn't condescend to homosexuals by simply painting them as victims. Romeo and Juliet were teenage innocents; Ennis and Jack's adult lives have consequences for others. Their sin isn't that they're gay; it's that they're having an affair. Brokeback avoids patronizing them as victims because this tragic flaw rounds them into full characters. Their secret tears apart the lives of their wives and children, deepening the tragedy wrought by closeted homosexuality and homophobia.

Ledger brilliantly conveys this complexity in his final scenes. When Ennis' daughter visits him in his unfurnished trailer house, Ledger navigates Ennis from humiliation, to pride and finally to an understated gratefulness when his daughter invites him to her wedding. His final breakdown — alone in his trailer, entangled with Jack's shirts — is a heartwrenching expression of disappointment. Ennis isn't ashamed that he's gay, but that he didn't live the life he wanted to — as a mate or a father. In this way, Ledger tears down the otherness of closeted homosexuals.

By the time Brokeback Mountain hit theaters, the cultural mainstream had already begun to shift away from Bush-style conservatism. In the spring of 2005, the Teri Schiavo episode exposed the ghoulishness of the extreme wing of the pro-life movement. The summer of 2005 brought Hurricane Katrina, which laid bare the incompetence of the Bush Administration. The quagmire in Iraq continued to sharply turn public sentiment against Bush. As Bush and his coalition lost credibility, the cultural tide turned against his evangelistic and conservative base. With the grip of conservatism loosened, progressivism began to take hold. The political arena of film followed suit: The fireworks of Fahrenheit 9/11 gave way to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, which transcended film to help usher in a new era of political greenness.

As a part of this new progressive movement, Brokeback Mountain can rightfully claim some credit for moving America beyond the massive gay panic of the Bush era. Released as the conservatives were losing their iron grip during the winter of 2005, Brokeback put normally aggressive conservative commentators in the awkward position of defending their own homophobia. True, homophobia still runs rampant throughout the Bible Belt and even, to a certain extent, in supposedly "liberal" Hollywood. And true, gay marriage amendments might not be a part of the 2008 election only because they've already been passed in most places where they'd be a boon to conservatives. But still, far fewer words, other than by the Huckabee campaign, have been uttered about gay marriage and "values" during the current election cycle. The worst homosexual slur of this campaign is Ann Coulter nonsensically calling John Edwards a "fag." The tectonic plates of the cultural zeitgeist have shifted against wholesale homophobia, even in red states. Brokeback played a key role in this progress.

Brokeback Mountain helped make this shift by giving progressives a chance to say, no, it's a just a great movie about two gay people in a complicated relationship — and absolutely nothing to be threatened by. The conservative media machine's condemnations of Brokeback Mountain as a "liberal message movie" didn't stick because Brokeback Mountain isn't a sledgehammer-subtle Hollywood message movie. This is what gives it power — it helped quiet gay panic by just letting the story speak for itself. Progressives and gay rights groups turned the tables on the macho conservatives: Hey, watch the movie, there's nothing to be scared of. Because Brokeback Mountain isn't overtly political, it helped diffuse the political opposition to gay rights.

Ledger himself didn't use his acclaim to carry a torch for gay rights groups. On first glance, this might seem timid or hypocritical, but the truth is that he couldn't have done anything better for the movement. If Ledger had climbed on a soapbox to take on O'Reilly and Hannity, he would have dragged the film into the political pigsty. Turning his performance into a platform would have undermined the film's power to speak about closeted homosexuality on its own, honest terms. Ledger did more by not politicizing the performance and letting the movie speak for itself. His stance in most interviews was something along the lines of, "To me, it's pretty straightforward. It's not as big of an issue as it's being made out to be. It's a love story between two people. It's pretty simple."

That is precisely the humanist argument for gay rights, no more compellingly made than through Heath Ledger's portrayal of Ennis Del Mar. Brokeback's influence reached millions — $150 million international box office and months of awards buzz, based largely on the strength of Ledger's performance. Even Wal-Mart, which banned CDs with Parental Advisory stickers and put blinders over Cosmopolitan, sided with Brokeback. Despite pressure from the conservative American Family Association, Wal-Mart promoted the DVD with posters featuring Gyllenhaal and Ledger. Of course, the fight is far from over, but Heath Ledger played an important role in changing the tide of battle. This is a legacy few actors of any generation can claim.