As 'The Dark Knight' beckons, we pause to remember Heath Ledger ... and the many other actors who left before their final work debuted

By Don Kaye and Frank Paiva
Special to MSN Movies

Months after actor Heath Ledger's sudden, shocking death in January, an online film critic wrote that she wasn't sure if she wanted to still see "The Dark Knight," his second-to-last film. She had just seen the latest trailer for the movie, and watching footage of his psychotic, macabre take on Batman's greatest nemesis, the Joker, in the aftermath of his passing had left her deeply troubled. Was the role so dark that it was too close to real-life events? And furthermore, she speculated, had playing such an insane character pushed Ledger himself into a downward spiral from which he never recovered?

We will never know what state of mind Ledger was in on that January afternoon. But the idea of avoiding his latest film appearance because he's no longer with us is nonsense. The man played the part so that people could watch it -- would he want them to turn away simply because he is no longer here? All artists create partly because they want to leave something behind. It would do Ledger -- and any other artist who has passed away -- the greatest dishonor to not look or reflect upon that creation.

And yet ... there is something to that critic's conflicted thoughts. The indigenous people of Australia believe that every time someone's photo is taken a little piece of their soul goes with the picture. In certain cases, like Brandon Lee or James Dean -- and, yes, perhaps even Ledger -- something seems to hang over their final screen images. Is the shadow of death looming unseen, perhaps embedded in the parts of their soul that they share on camera? Or does our knowledge that this person now exists only on celluloid fill us with dread about our own mortality?

If anything, film is the closest we can come to immortality itself. Because of the nature of the medium, we can see and hear the living person move and talk for as long as the films themselves are around -- reason enough to watch and cherish the following performances over and over again. Two quick notes: for whatever reason, early death has claimed a lot more men than women; and we also haven't forgotten Jean Harlow, Tupac Shakur, Donald Pleasence, John Ritter or many others. We may not have had room for them here, but their movies live on.