"The Dark Knight" stands poised to dominate the box office this weekend, for reasons that it's hard to feel completely good about.
The movie has its built-in comic-book audience, of course, but also a joker in the hole: a TMZ culture fixated on train-wreck celebrity, anticipating Heath Ledger's Joker as some kind of suicide note.
Will we see evidence of the bleary, reckless spiral that claimed his life?
Is he Hollywood's Van Gogh, a mad genius appreciated now in death?
Is this, somehow, the role that killed him?
We've seen high-profile, posthumous performances before, of course, but nothing that's provoked this kind of morbid fascination. (Was anyone looking for clues to Owen Wilson's suicide attempt in "Drillbit Taylor?" Wait, I take that back.)
Warner Bros. has tactfully said nothing on the subject and initially presented Ledger's death as a delicate public relations problem. But as the months have passed, it's looking more and more like a gold mine. A poll of some 8,000 visitors to movietickets.com shows 68 percent list Ledger's performance as the main reason for seeing the movie.
And the truth is that Ledger's turn as the Joker - quite eccentric and quite good - will only intensify speculation about his performance and his state of mind.
As the Joker, his smeared lipstick and electro-shock hair make him look like Bette Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane," and the movie puts him front and center immediately, giving him a grand entrance.
It's a bank heist, and while the perps wear cartoon masks, the violence is real (almost "Heat" real) and pegs The Joker as a deranged man in love with chaos and death:
"Whatever doesn't kill you," he announces, after much killing, "makes you stranger."
The prologue also establishes The Joker as a loner - the polar twin to Batman's lone ranger of justice. It's why the Joker has contempt for the hoodlums he organizes and exploits, and why he regards Batman as Gotham's only interesting guy and worthy opponent.
The feeling is not mutual.
Batman has issues, but he also has humanity. He's knows, for instance, that he's capable of love. He carries a torch for lifelong friend Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal) but stands aside as she falls for DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). Why? Because Dent's a crusader who stands behind the rule of law rather than a mask, a true hero around whom Gotham, and Rachel, can rally.
