“Walk The Line”

Subhead: Hollywood does justice to the love story of Johnny and June Carter Cash. This long-time Cash fan and admirer couldn't be happier.

Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon nailed the lead performances. The script was succinct (for a 2+-hour movie), insightful and affecting and the period production design and photography was dead-on. The scenes of Johnny and June with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, et al on tour together were terrific fun and joyfully wrought. Johnny's dad, Ray Cash, was also especially well-portrayed (as a bag full of assholes) by Terminator 2's Robert Patrick.

Unlike last year's similar effort, “Ray,” this film is less a whole-life-at-a-glance piece and more of a straightforward love story. To accomplish this, whole aspects of Cash's life during the period covered were left by the wayside (his social activism) or just touched upon (the role his Christian faith played in his eventual redemption), but there are certain to be more Cash bio-flicks in the future. If they can address those sides of his life as well as “Walk The Line” does the love story, they will likely be considered successes too.

Some reviewers have tried to make a point about how Johnny's frustration in failing to woo June dovetailed with his pill addiction, but as a junkie myself, I'm telling you that's bullshit. If anything, it was his pill addiction that kept June at arm's length, not vice versa. The single funniest line in the flick may have been when somebody hands Johnny pills for the first time. He looks skeptical till that somebody assures him, “...Elvis takes them!” Camera pans over to a skinny young Elvis, smiling and nodding like a junkie bobblehead doll. Priceless.

Another cool thing about the film is the way it explores the creative process. Songs don't just jump out fully formed, there are a number of scenes detailing the actual sweat and work of birthing a song. And having the leads sing their own parts works surprisingly well. Phoenix gets the gist of Cash's voice (but not the heft, and considering Cash's unique instrument, that's hardly an indictment of Phoenix's effort), and Witherspoon is eerily dead-on impersonating June's too-sweet singing voice. And for God's sake, she learned to play the autoharp for this flick! What's an autoharp? I don't know, but it looks like an accordian whose molecules got scrambled in a teleportation malfunction.

The movie builds... By the time we get to the gig at Folsom Prison, Phoenix's performance absolutely roars. You never really forget you're watching an actor portray Cash (the way you might have watching Jamie Foxx brilliantly mimic Ray Charles in “Ray”) but Phoenix fully inhabits and effectively communicates both the darkness and the light of the magnificent contradiction that was Johnny Cash.

I'm so grateful Hollywood got this one right. In fairness, “Coal Miner's Daughter” is still the gold standard of this genre (I've also heard great things about Eastwood's “Bird,” but that film, sadly, is bound to be saddled with a jazz score that would undoubtedly drive me to distraction), but I would place “Walk the Line” at a solid #2 to CMD.