Walk the Line
I know, I know…Walk the Line has been out since November; but, hey – at least I finally saw it.  Unfortunately, I now regret not screening it sooner than I did.  For those of you who are as behind as I am on director James Mangold’s latest film, Walk the Line is the heart-wrenching story of The Man in Black’s early career based upon Johnny Cash’s own autobiography.  I have to admit that before I saw the film, my exposure to Johnny Cash and his music mostly consisted of the tapes my dad would listen to during the road trips we used to take when I was a kid.  Naturally, I was intrigued by the checkered past of the Man in Black of which I knew little about; and, like every other critic in America, I couldn’t help but compare it to Ray.  But, unlike the confusingly fragmented Ray, which only serves to tell the life story of Ray Charles,  Line stops to revisit nearly every influential moment in Johnny Cash’s life; and, I mean everything.  Starting with Johnny’s older brother Jack (Lucas Till) dying in a table saw accident where his dad (Robert Patrick) tells Johnny it should have been him, to his stint in the Air Force where he wrote “Folsom Prison Blues,” to Sam Phillips signing him to the Sun label – but, only after he tells Johnny he can’t sing gospel, through Johnny’s years of touring with skinny Elvis and the Killer, all of his ceaseless pining over June Carter, the drugs, the booze, the women, and…oh yeah, I almost forgot…there was that little concert he gave at Folsom Prison.
The best advice I can give anyone before they see Walk the Line goes all the way back to the first sentence ever uttered in the very first film class I ever took:  “The only reason anyone likes any film is because it tells them what they already want to hear.”
That being said, Line is probably not going to sit very well with someone who wants to see the story of young Johnny Cash as told by someone looking through rose-colored glasses.  Obviously Johnny had some self-esteem issues; and, since the story is told from his point of view, it is virtually impossible to portray the Man in Black as a glorified musical god.  Johnny Cash is indeed a tragic hero; and, the film tells the truth as only the man who lived it could – raw and ugly.  As for everyone raving over the performances of Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, what I want to know is:  What kind of dope are they smoking, and where can I get some?  Phoenix’s impersonation of Cash doesn’t even come close to Jamie Foxx’s Oscar worthy portrayal of Ray Charles.  Where Foxx actually became Ray, Phoenix merely impersonates Johnny.  The only time he even vaguely resembles the country legend is if you squint your eyes and view him from a distance.  Another thing that bothered me is Mangold’s decision not to use actual recordings of Johnny and June by having Joaquin and Reese do all of their own singing.  Granted, their singing is decent; but, because Joaquin’s renditions carry none of Johnny’s recognizable baritone, the film loses some of its authenticity.    What I actually liked about Walk the Line was the dysfunctional love story of Johnny Cash and June Carter:  boy meets girl, falls in love, becomes self-destructive over his unrequited love for girl, forms a codependent relationship with girl thanks to his drug habit, gets divorced, girl stubbornly rejects over forty marriage proposals from boy, and boy eventually tricks girl into accepting his marriage proposal onstage at the end of the film.  Gee, sounds like a match made in heaven, doesn’t it?
		But, seriously, if you are looking for a feel-good story about Johnny Cash’s rise to fame, Walk the Line is probably going to leave you feeling more than just a little disenchanted.  Instead, what you will find is an ugly look inside the events that inspired a troubled soul’s creative genius.  If you  remember that great music is about the emotions that inspired it, which in turn creates the moment in which we remember it, by the end of the film you’ll realize Lester Bangs was right when he said, “that’s what great art is about:  guilt, longing, love disguised as sex, and sex disguised as love.”
Photo courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox © Left From Hollywood 2006