Theatrical Review: Walk The Line

I'll tell you where I'm coming from right off the bat, so you'll know what to expect before you read my review of Walk The Line. I have five heroes: Jesus Christ, Saint Peter, C.S. Lewis, Bob Dole, and Johnny Cash. That's the perspective from which I'll review Walk The Line. If that bothers you, don't read this review. However, if that does bother you, you probably wouldn't have any interest in a movie about Johnny Cash anyway.

I grew up listening to the music my parents liked, which isn't unusual. My parents liked George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, etc. When I was a teenager in the rebellion phase, I hated all of that music. I've come to actually like all of it in my old age, of course. People say that we turn into our parents, and at least to that degree, I have done so.

For me, Johnny Cash was the doorway to country music. I got a job working at a radio station right out of high school, and most of what we played was country. I hated it. I thought it was all awful. All of it except for Cash. I can't remember which Johnny Cash album it was that got my attention, but I do remember playing tracks from one of his albums on the air one day and thinking to myself "This guy is good, he's cool. He's the real thing. He's different from the others."

Little did I know at the time that I'd just had the same initial thought about Johnny Cash that has created every life-long Johnny Cash fan out there.

Cash sang about love, and you could feel the pain. He sang about God, and you shared his reverence. He sang about murder, and you had the feeling that he knew about the subject from personal experience. In Folsom Prison Blues, when he sang "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die," you had to wonder if it was a lyric or an actual confession. Nobody... NOBODY ...could put it across like Johnny Cash. When he sang a song, he owned both the song and the listener.

In Walk The Line, Joaquin Phoenix doesn't so much portray cash as become him. It's one of those jaw-dropping performances, like Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon and Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner's Daughter. For Cash fans, the performance is a moving tribute from an actor who worked hard to get it right. Johnny Cash personally picked Phoenix to play him in the movie before his death in 2003, and the pick was perfect. Especially considering that Phoenix sings all of Cash's songs himself in the film, pulling off an impression that's uncanny at times.

The reason to see the film is for Phoenix. His performance is outstanding. I can't pretend to say objectively that his performance is so good that even people who don't idolize Cash will love the movie. I don't have that objectivity, I'm a huge Cash fan. I will say, though, that I am sure that other Cash fans like myself will think the movie is well worth their while.

Phoenix's performance is the movie's strongest element. The second strongest is that the film is basically the story of Cash's romance with his wife, June Carter (of country music's fabled Carter Family). The relationship between June and Johnny is the stuff that country music and American popular culture legends are made of. Cash fell in love with June before he ever met her, as a young fan. Once his own star began to rise, he got the chance to tour with Carter (along with Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis) as one of the new faces of Sun Records. That first tour sparked the bond that would unite the two of them forever, in spite of their separate failed marriages and Cash's history of drug abuse and unpredictable outbursts. June stayed with Johnny through his rough years, and he credited her love and friendship as the guiding force in his life that got him off drugs and lead him to Christ. She finally agreed to marry him after he wore her down with repeated, dogged proposals. Cash never hid his faults from his fans, and openly declared on many occasions that June was his salvation. No man ever loved his wife more. June died in early 2003, and Johnny didn't last four months without her.

The movie is essentially the story of the love affair between June Carter and Johnny Cash, and it's a story that's as complex and gritty as the best country music is itself. Strong performances from supporting cast members augment the production, with Waylon Payne as Jerry Lee Lewis stealing each of his scenes (much as "The Killer" would have done, himself). Robert Patrick is also good as Ray Cash, Johnny's father... and he lends a complexity and multiple layers to a role that other actors might have played one-dimensionally. Ray Cash was far from an ideal father, he was terribly flawed. But he was a flawed man, not a monster. Patrick gets it right.

Two scenes in the movie were particularly strong and memorable; the first was Cash's first audition for Sam Phillips of Sun Records, the second was the movie's recreation of the legendary Folsom Prison concert, which is glimpsed in the opening scenes and presented more fully toward the movie's end.

That opening scene, by the way, was really something. The movie first presents itself from the perspective of prison guards, uneasy as Folsom literally shakes with stomping feet and throbbing bass guitar. Cash brought something powerful and menacing to the prison when he performed there, and the threat of real chaos, the potential for a violent trip into the unknown, was palpable. Of course, Cash fans know that it was that potential, that threat, always lurking in the background, that kept our attention.

Those elements are strong enough to warrant a strong, positive review from me, in spite of the complaints I have with the movie, which are as follows:

Reese Witherspoon, as June Carter, is a terrible casting decision. It's not that Witherspoon is a bad actress. She's fine. I've seen and enjoyed lots of her work, and if you've caught the criminally under-seen black comedy Freeway, then you know that she's right at home in edgy stories. The problem is, there was more to June Carter than a woman riding a storm. Professionally, she lived and died in Johnny's shadow... but it was always apparent to those of us who followed them that she was his rock. She kept him stable. She was the one person who could tame the monster inside of him. There was an authority, a power about the presence of June Carter that Reese Witherspoon just can't convey.

The movie takes a few liberties with some of the facts. Certain songs are introduced in Johnny's career out of sequence, certain people are glanced over or left out. The instrumental role Johnny played in Bob Dylan's career, as one of his first and most visible champions, is hinted at but never really explained. Johnny's CBS program is never mentioned, and his rocky relationship with the Nashville establishment is presented obliquely. (Johnny's relationship with the bosses of Nashville, by the way, can almost best be described as a war... as evidence, check out this full page ad that Johnny's record label ran in Billboard magazine after his Best Country Album Grammy win in the late '90's.)

At 136 minutes, the movie is just too darn short. It ends, chronologically, in 1969... with most of the story untold. I know, I know, not many people are going to make that complaint about a movie that's better than two hours. I'm one of the few. I could have sat through another hour and still wanted more.

When Cash died, U2's Bono said of him "In a garden of weeds, the oak." Turn your radio to any country music station and listen to Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Big & Rich, Brooks & Dunn, etc. It'll be obvious that Bono was right. The oak is gone, we're left with only weeds, and Johnny's worthy contemporaries, like Haggard and Lynn, don't get any airplay these days. If this movie's success helps remedy that, great. If not, that's fine, too. Cash succeeded on his own terms, and sometimes in spite of them. The same can be said of Walk The Line.



August, 2006: A sidenote: I've recently watched Walk The Line again on DVD and I realize now that I really was far too hard on Reese Witherspoon's performance. I don't know if I was just in a bad mood the day I saw the movie in the theater, or if it was just that Witherspoon's performance went over my head that day. Whatever the case may be, I didn't get it. The quiet, rock-steady reliability of June Carter really is fully aparent in Witherspoon's work in this film. I blew the call on her performance in this review. Mea culpa.  ¶ 7:30 AM