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Walk the Line review
2006.01.11 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole
Walk the Line— not Ring of Fire. |
The Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line could have had any of several other names: Ring of Fire, Man in Black, I Shot a Man in Reno, Hello I'm Johnny Cash, or maybe even A Boy Named Sue. Cash's life was filled with the struggles of a lonesome, troubled man. That life comes thru to the silver screen in Walk the Line. Joaquin Phoenix stars as Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter, the woman he couldn't get out of his mind since he heard her on the radio as a small boy.
The film was directed by James Mangold, the under-appreciated hand at the helm of Cop Land and Girl, Interrupted. It's written by Mangold with Gill Dennis, the man with the oddest resume in American cinema (is he a screen writer? a TV writer? an actor? a director? a producer? The answer is "yes" to all of these, but also "not a very good one").
Whatever he did this time, it worked. Walk the Line is one of the best films I've ever seen. And I've seen The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (and I can whistle the theme song).
[T]he dialog also lets Phoenix display some of Cash's... humor (he manages a Foghorn Leghorn joke before he passes out in public...). |
The story examines the childhood traumas that made Cash a loner, the love of music and the dreams of making it big that drove him, the troubled marriage and demons of addiction that nearly ruined him, and one woman who haunted his mind and at last saved him from himself. The dialog is good; Mangold lets the characters speak their emotions with their mannerisms, not their mouths, but the dialog also lets Phoenix display some of Cash's trademark self-deprecating, sometimes goofy, humor (he manages a Foghorn Leghorn joke before he passes out in public, for example).
The film shows the fascinating Sun Records world of early country and western and rock and roll music that Cash was a part of. We meet people like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and Waylon Jennings, all on tour together. This is Cash's story, tho, and these are minor characters—so minor that many younger viewers will not be able to identify them (even I thought Roy Orbison was Buddy Holly at one point).
I've always liked Phoenix, Witherspoon, and Patrick but... I'd never seen them before in roles that really grabbed me. |
The villains here are drink and pills, and Cash's own self-destructive tendencies, as well as, to a lesser degree, his father—a proud, hard man played marvelously by Robert Patrick. I've always liked Phoenix, Witherspoon, and Patrick but until Walk the Line I'd never seen them before in roles that really grabbed me. Here they do. Phoenix was terrific in Gladiator, but a villainous emperor—even a warped, conflicted one who just wants to be loved (and to rule the world)—is never fully accessible. Phoenix's Johnny Cash is accessible. Half the time, you're inside his head. Half the time you're outside, shaking your own head, wondering what the hell he's going to screw up next.
There are a few directorial missteps, but only minor ones. The scene in which Cash's band auditions for Sam Phillips at Sun Records is the standard, cheesy first-performance scene in every musician movie: slow, unsteady rhythm and trembling, mumbled lyrics gradually blossom into the performer we know and love (as June says, "steady like a freight train; sharp like a razor"). This could have been accomplished with a montage, with the performance improving over successive tries (Johnny even tells his wife later that they did the song six times).
And, despite her two failed marriages to Johnny's one, June Carter comes off like a saint. |
And, despite her two failed marriages to Johnny's one, June Carter comes off like a saint. I saw this with a Johnny Cash fan (okay, it was Mark Beckstrom), who confirmed that the film followed Cash's autobiography. It's fine to portray her as Johnny saw her, but it would have been nice to see a little of her back story. Only by checking out June Carter's entry on Wikipedia did I learn that she did some acting during the time of the film and hobnobbed with Elia Kazan, Robert Duvall, and James Dean.
Phoenix and Witherspoon do their own singing and blow the roof off the joint. |
Phoenix's Cash is uncanny, and Phoenix and Witherspoon do their own singing and blow the roof off the joint. The plot is familiar—tough childhood, wanders aimlessly, gets a break, hits it big, nearly self-destructs, turns self around, finds peace—but ultimately, this is a film about a character. Seeing that story portrayed by such skilled actors, with smart dialog, immersed in a world of the late 50s/early 60s that I never doubted, makes me love going to the movies.
And it makes me want to shoot a man in Reno... just to watch him die.
f e e d b a c k
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