Posted on Fri, Jan. 20, 2006

At the movies
‘Brokeback’ returns Ledger to top of A-list

Scripps Howard News Service
FortWayne.com


Australian-born Heath Ledger has been a known commodity in Hollywood for half a decade, but he hasn’t exactly stormed the A-list. During the past few years, Ledger’s stock has been in decline, partly because of box-office and critical flops such as “Ned Kelly,” “Four Feathers” and “The Order.”

After those there was a supporting role as a stoned-out surfer in “Lords of Dogtown,” with Ledger virtually disappearing inside his portrayal of a man who sponsored skateboard teams. “Dogtown” was followed by an even less ballyhooed performance in Terry Gilliam’s “The Brothers Grimm.”

But it wasn’t until “Brokeback Mountain” began showing on the fall-festival circuit that Ledger, 26, started turning heads again, even generating talk about an Oscar nomination.

Heath Ledger has ridden horses, fallen in love and faced deep tragedy, so taking on the role of a man who does all three at once in “Brokeback Mountain” made him an easy choice.

“It felt like a story that hadn’t been told, which is rare,” says Ledger, who adds the script “left a lump” in his throat. “It felt perfect, and there was a seemingly perfect director (Ang Lee) attached to it also, so I thought I’d be crazy to walk away from it.”

“Brokeback Mountain,” which opened locally today, tells the story of a ranch hand (Ledger) and a rodeo cowboy (Jake Gyllenhaal) who meet and fall in love in summer 1963 while herding sheep in the high-country pastures of Wyoming and then spend two decades in anguish as they conform to societal expectations. The movie has been eliciting excitement and snickers since it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in September. (The film also won a Golden Globe this week for best picture, drama.)

The excitement has come from Oscar watchers and film critics – seven U.S. critics groups named it the best film of 2005 – and viewers in major cities, who helped it set box-office records for the highest per-screen average of any 2005 film when it debuted in limited release in December. The snickers have come from talk-show hosts, comedians and DJs who’ve preyed on mainstream America’s supposed homophobia with a steady barrage of gay-cowboy jokes.

Ledger, however, was excited about playing taciturn Ennis Del Mar when he read the script, adapted by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and novelist Larry McMurtry (“The Last Picture Show”) and Diana Ossana from a short story by Pulitzer Prize winner E. Annie Proulx. The star of such crowd-pleasers as “A Knight’s Tale,” “10 Things I Hate About You” and “The Patriot” says his managers never tried to steer him away from playing a gay character.

“The script was packaged with fears and anxieties, which seemed fairly manufactured by, I think, mainly the studios and the people wanting to put up money,” he tells reporters in an interview at a Park Avenue hotel. “I never personally felt like I had a career at risk.”

Except for the 2001 art-house hit “Monster’s Ball,” Ledger’s recent films have tanked, so “I didn’t know what I had at stake anyway,” he says. “I’m kind of willing to be a little ruthless with it. If anything, it felt like an opportunity for me to mature as a person and an actor, which is what I’m looking for.”

The 26-year-old Australian, who now lives in Brooklyn with “Brokeback” co-star Michelle Williams (who gave birth to their baby, Matilda, in October), says he never intended to court controversy by doing the film.

“It’s obviously not really that controversial to me; otherwise, I wouldn’t have done it,” Ledger says. “I think it’s unfortunate that it is. We certainly didn’t make it to raise any eyebrows.”

Many gays have embraced the film before even seeing it because it addresses a repressive experience that strikes a universal chord. But Ledger hesitates to describe “Brokeback Mountain” as a gay love story.

“It’s a very touchy subject because if I say, ‘Well no, it isn’t,’ there’ll be a lot of people who go, ‘Hang on, it is – we want it to be,’ ” he says. “I wanted my particular character ... whether you want to label him gay or not ... (is) just a human being and his soul falling in love with another soul, and it just happened to be in the vessel of a man.

“I wanted to find out what Ennis was battling inside,” Ledger said. “The conclusion I came to is that he was battling his genetic structure. He was fighting the traditions and values and fears and ideals that had been passed down to him through his father.”

The questions came fast and furious. How would Ennis hold his body? How would being on a horse all day change his posture?

“Also, what does being trapped (gay man in a super-straight world) do to your voice? Your voice must have a battle of its own,” Ledger said. “Each word has to kind of punch its way out, to fight its way out. Expression is a fight for Ennis.

“I wanted to try to find a voice for him, a way of moving his mouth. I wanted sounds to be too loud for him, the lights to be too bright for him. Any form of expression was overload. You find all that stuff and (the performance) falls into place.”