The Joker He is much more than a comic book villain: he is chaos, provocation and anarchy incarnate. As a character he has evolved since his first appearance in the role and, in addition, he has his own legacy – apart – both in television, film and, of course, video games. Said this way, it might seem relatively simple for an actor to understand and manage to take on the character, but, as you will see, the reality is much more complex. For Heath Ledger, who played him in The Dark Knightit was a process that required weeks of preparation.
It goes without saying that all those actors who have brought the Joker to the big screen have interpreted him in a different way and through their own processes. Jared Leto tormented his filming companions in his contribution to the Suicide Squad and for Joaquin Phoenix the transformation was from the outside in as he tried to offer the general public an x-ray of the clown prince of crime.
The case of Heath Ledger, however, is truly exceptional. And he did not live to see his exceptional work. In fact, it is worth keeping in mind that filmmaker and director Chris Nolan filmed Batman Begins intentionally leaving the loose end of the letter with the Joker right at the end in reference to the archenemy of DC’s caped crusader, but originally he did not plan to make a sequel, much less a trilogy.
What was clear to him from the beginning was that Ledger would be his ideal choice. There were more candidates, mind you, but the actor knew how to instantly understand the filmmaker’s vision. Borrowing from specific influences, such as Alex himself who starred (or antagonized?) A Clockwork Orange de Stanley Kubrick.
However, there was a previous bar to address and an unavoidable point of reference: what would happen to Jack Nicholson’s Joker that was so influential in Tim Burton’s films? Ledger was fully aware that the comparisons would be there.
The six weeks that shaped the best Joker on the big screen
In an interview for EmpireHeath Ledger talked about the process of creating the Joker, starting with how he decided to establish the margins between the universes of Burton’s Batman and the one that had been proposed by Nolan. The conclusion he quickly reached: the interpretation of the Joker had to be different. Or, rather, new.
I am a big fan of Jack Nicholson’s Joker, but, since I had seen Chris’s first film [Batman Begins]I knew there was a big difference between a Chris Nolan movie and a Tim Burton movie. Therefore, there was enough room for a new interpretation.
Creating a character of such depth and relevance to fans of Batman and comics in general is a colossal challenge and Nolan was always aware of Ledger’s abilities to go further as a talented actor. However, in order to appropriate the character, he decided to go further and lock himself up until he became the Joker.
“I sat in a hotel room in London for over a month, locked myself in there, kept a little diary and experimented with voices. I ended up getting closer to the realm of a psychopath, someone with no empathy, with very little or no awareness of his actions, which is fun, because there are no real limits on what he says or how you say something or what he does. And I don’t know, it’s always a very personal process in terms of how you put yourself in the shoes of the character, so to speak.”
As it later emerged, Ledger’s stay at Ledger’s London hotel lasted about six weeks. And although he didn’t say it then, the Joker’s voice was partly borrowed from another agent of chaos who, in this case, was not born from paper: nothing more and nothing less than punk legend Sid Vicious. Something that gives sensational nuances to the result.
Still, Legder took much more than a diary to the hotel. Despite discarding references to Tim Burton’s Joker, he soaked up the original material to mold his character by surrounding himself with comics and assimilating every part of Nolan’s script. Achieving that, after the makeup process, the conversion into the character was total.
“It’s a combination of reading all the comics I could and the script, and then closing your eyes and meditating on it. Plus, there’s something about the metaphor of working behind the mask, and from inside a mask. It always gives you the license to do whatever you want.”
However, in addition to Nolan’s script and Heath Ledger’s talent, there was a third essential pillar to achieve the iconic character: characterization. Achieving a look that, even after so many years since the premiere, is absolutely distinguishable from all the other Jokers before and after the Dark Knight. And that raises a logical question: Who came up with the scars?
…Why so serious?
Unlike Bane, Batman or Catwoman from the dark knight trilogythe Joker practically goes barefaced. Well, she has what we can say is quite striking makeup. The other reality is that, according to Ledger, it took between an hour and an hour and a half to achieve the result. Something that, compared to other large productions and judging by the results, is relatively fast.
Believe it or not, the scars on the Joker’s face were not prosthetics, but were made of silicone. That they were in the way helped the character, it must be said. Therefore, in addition to the layers of paint, a mouthguard was used and, according to the actor, the entire lower lip is fake. The inspiration? According to Lindy Hemming (costume designer), once again the culprit was the scoundrel Sid Vicious.
“What we were looking for at the beginning of how to make this Joker were images. I was looking for images of people who might have dressed like that in the pop and fashion world. You can imagine Vivienne Westwood with Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Pete Doherty. Think about all those people who dress up and are very interested in how they look, and then we add his life.
So whatever is wrong with him, what made him like this, means that he doesn’t really care about himself. He is a type of person who sweats constantly and probably doesn’t live anywhere. “We were trying to make him kind of a… I don’t want to say homeless… but a backstory for him, who doesn’t really take care of himself.”
The Joker’s costume rounds out his iconography. We assume that his background has always been a mystery – in most incarnations of the character – and to give it to him is to have to give up much of what he symbolizes. Logically, through costumes it is possible to give certain nuances and clues to the viewer. But that doesn’t solve the origin of his scars.
And, to be fair, even prosthetics supervisor Conor O’Sullivan was not clear how they had appeared.
“I was never given a concept or reason for the scars before I started designing the Joker’s scars. Once I had in mind that they were going to be scars, instead of a fixed smile, I immediately thought of the punk and skinhead era and some unpleasant characters I had encountered during that time.
The terminology for this type of injury is “the Glasgow smile” or “Chelsea smile.” My references had to be real. A delivery of slot machines was made to the farm near my workshop and the man delivering them had a “Chelsea smile.” I worked up the courage to ask him for a photo and he told me the story of how he had gotten the scars while participating in “a dog fight”; Needless to say, I didn’t press the matter, but the photos turned out to be a very useful reference.”
The master touch was, precisely, the work of the artist Francis Bacon. If this doesn’t sound familiar to you, you’ll be pleased to know that his was the only painting that Tim Burton’s Joker saved in the iconic gallery scene. So the makeup team, prosthetics team and even Nolan himself found the definitive reference with which to finish creating his Joker.
“On the day of the test, Heath was very involved with the painting and, among him, John [Caglione, Jr., maquillador] and Chris, leaned toward a painting by Francis Bacon that Chris kept referencing. The scars marked the position of the red “smile” and gave a physical deformity to the whole, while the black and white makeup gave him the look of a disheveled clown.”
The Dark Knight It premiered in 2008 and since then we have seen new Jokers on the small and big screen. And despite this, they all somehow end up compared to that of Heath Ledger and Chris Nolan.
The best Clown Prince we will ever see in theaters? The big joke here is that even to create the embodiment of chaos, the process was as methodical as it was flawless. The results: an icon that transcends the screen and is part of our construct of what a great movie villain is and should be.
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