Stephen Romei:
Ledger Belongs in the Front Rank
But his great performance may not be enough to win him an Oscar

February 02, 2006


IF Heath Ledger is denied an Oscar for Brokeback Mountain when the best actor envelope is opened on March 5 it will be the greatest robbery since Ronald Arthur Biggs forced an unscheduled stop on the London-to-Glasgow mail train.

Perhaps I exaggerate - Philip Seymour Hoffman, favourite to win for Capote, is an undeniable talent - but it's to make a point: at just 26, Perth-born Ledger has delivered a performance of astonishing maturity that will stand the test of time.

He can be proud of himself, and we should be proud of him. He has acted out of his skin - which is that of an occasionally yobbish heterosexual Australian male - and beyond his years to produce something utterly deserving of the Academy Award nomination he received yesterday.

Ledger becomes gay cowboy Ennis Del Mar. There are no false notes. As the film unfolds we want nothing more than for our Heath - whom we have forgotten is our Heath - to settle down with his handsome lover on a little ranch in the wilds of Wyoming.

In the final scenes, which see Del Mar still struggling to articulate 20 years of impossible feeling, Ledger lays bare the nature of yearning in a way that moves us to contemplate our most important relationships.

It is one of the finest performances by a male actor in many years. Looking for an equal in recent Oscar winners, you have to go back to 1980, Robert De Niro and Raging Bull.

That Ledger can be a bit of a prat off-screen only emphasises his achievement. It's the work that matters. He now rivals Russell Crowe as Australia's greatest actor; the other contender is Naomi Watts.

If he does win, Ledger will be the youngest best actor recipient in history. Adrien Brody was 22 days shy of his 30th birthday when he scored for The Pianist in 2002.

Crowe was 35 when he got the thumbs-up for Gladiator in 2000, the year after he made the film for which he should have won, The Insider. The film Crowe made at age 26 was The Crossing.

Nicole Kidman was 35 when her fake nose won an Oscar for The Hours. No shame in that; Jose Ferrer set the precedent half a century earlier in Cyrano de Bergerac.

However, those proboscis-powered victories do point to a problem for Ledger. Oscars history shows Hollywood loves to honour actors who take on physical challenges or who play the challenged.

Recent examples include Jamie Fox and Al Pacino playing blind men in Ray and Scent of a Woman respectively; Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot; Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump and Australia's Geoffrey Rush (he was 45, by the way) in Shine.

This year, it looks as though Seymour Hoffman, 39, will win for doing a voice, specifically the girlish voice of gay American writer Truman Capote. Seymour Hoffman has been on the edge of greatness for a while, so few will begrudge him.

And Ledger can rely on another Hollywood tradition to see him right eventually: the Oops Oscar, as in "Oops, we really should have given Paul Newman-Al Pacino-Jack Lemmon an Oscar for The Verdict-Serpico-The Apartment, so let's give him one for this rather ordinary The Colour of Money-Scent of a Woman-Save the Tiger.

In Ledger's case, however, expect him to deserve it just as much the second time around.

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Stephen Romei is editor of The Weekend Australian Review.