If you’re looking for a pretty good impersonation of Johnny Cash, with some of his most famous songs re-played by actors inside the Hollywood elite, you’ll find that Walk the Line an enjoyable two-hour homage to the man in black. If, however, you’re looking for a deeper understanding of Cash’s troubled life and the inspiration for his songs, James Mangold’s film delves no deeper than an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music series – albeit with a bigger budget and better editing. Charting his early childhood in Arkansas to his rise as an established musician, Walk the Line is rarely dull and the strong acting by Joaquin Phoenix as Cash and Reese Witherspoon (playing June Carter) bring a level of legitimacy to the proceedings, even when the storyline is mired with nothing but rock ‘n roll clichés. Overall, the film doesn’t do anything inventive or unique for the biopic genre (which many films have attempted this year), and to be quite honest, this type of story has been told countless times with everyone from James Dean (James Dean) and Ray Charles (Ray) to Charles Chaplin (Chaplin), and always utilizing the same dramatic arc: the struggling artist’s traumatic childhood, which in this case recalls Cash’s guilt over the death of his older brother (comparable to Phoenix’s own loss of his brother, River Phoenix); the successful record deal audition revealing the pioneering talent of a young Cash; the rise to stardom, the drugs and womanizing, the fall from grace and eventual resurgence thanks to dedication and the love of a good woman (of course).
You could make the case that Walk the Line bucks the biopic trend by only concentrating on a specific portion of Johnny Cash’s life, and in doing so thankfully spares the audience from having to watch Phoenix stumble around in age makeup, but the film fails to transcend the material and consequently continues to play like a highlights reel package. The saving grace however, and ultimately the reason why I ended up liking the film, is the scenes of Cash on-stage, playing the hits most people are familiar with. Everything from Mangold’s direction to Phoenix’s performance bring to life songs that, for me, were always something I had heard on the radio or even worse, on Time Life’s compilation of Country Classic infomercials. Phoenix is simply incredible with his perfection of Cash’s style – from his signature posture with the guitar slung across his shoulders like a battle axe to his singing in Cash’s heavy delivery – that you’d be hard pressed to remember it’s indeed an actor and not the man himself. Thankfully, there are several moments where the narrative only concerns itself with the concert footage and plays more like a musical then it does a straight drama. The emotion expressed in Cash’s concerts, including the famous performance at Folsom prison, reveal more about his story and emotional struggle than the countless drug induced impropriety shown off-stage. And what should a biopic of Johnny Cash be but a true testament of his on-stage musical legacy.
Richard Saad
© Cinephile Magazine, 2006