Walk the Line

Boasting stellar performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line is a Johnny Cash biopic that is so much like last year's Ray Charles biopic that it will be tough for it to suffer the comparisons, especially since Ray is easily a much better movie overall. I do have to admit that I didn't know one single Johnny Cash (nor June Carter) song before going to see the movie, and I only recognized one of them, Ring of Fire but just because it's been promoted since the movie was announced. So fans of Johnny Cash and country music in general will probably like it better, and I quite liked it.

Poor and having to work during his childhood, with a brother that died when they were kids, a tough time to get into the business, and a drug abuse problem that came with that, all that was part of Ray, and also of Walk the Line now. And both had very strong, Oscar worthy performances. Joaquin Phoenix plays the Man in Black and what a performance he gives. Quite and very interior at times, or putting it all out because of the drug or the alcohol, he makes no mistake. Emotional when needed, funny too. Of course that this is the best performance of his career, and he was great in Gladiator, Quills and Buffalo Soldiers too. If I had to give someone the Oscar the right now, I'd go with Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote though, but Joaquin would be second in line.
A tougher role in the movie was that of Reese Witherspoon who plays June Carter, the love of Johnny Cash's life for a long time before she finally married him. Reese is amazing here, perfectly transforming into June from the beginning of the movie. She has a very thick accent, that must've been easy since being a southern belle herself, and luckily doesn't tiring or anything. Oscar talk again, she would be a lock to win if she were supporting. Still, she has great chances as a lead actress. I liked her better than Charlize Theron in North Country, but I'm not so sure if better than Gwyneth Paltrow in Proof, though both those movies tanked at the box office so it's going to be very tough for them to overpower Reese.

Johnny Cash's story starts with the death of his brother, which happened when they were young and left him with a grudge against his father who made him miserable after the accident (Jack Cash died while working cutting wood on a circular saw). The father, Ray Cash, is played by Robert Patrick who gives a pretty good performance too.
After Johnny got married for the first time he formed a country band with some friends from work (who were not good musicians at all) and then he found a recording company who let them record a song but not before they changed their music which was very mediocre at first, but once Cash found his right sound and style, he was a superstar.
June Carter had been a star since she was a child and around these days she was married and singing with her husband. She played it funny though, as her family of big musicians always told her that she wasn't the best of them, and so she thought of bringing comedy to her act.
She had a tough time having to put up with all those boys she toured with (during their Sun Records days, which gave life to many popular singers back then), which included Elvis Presley (pop-star Tyler Hilton), Jerry Lee Lewis (Waylon Malloy Payne) and Carl Perkins (blues singer Johnny Holiday). And after that she had to live with Johnny Cash's stalking (pretty much) and the people's disapproval of her getting divorced which happened twice before wedding Cash, and during all that she also got put down for forming a relationship with him (just friends though at first) while they were both married. Cash's first wife was Vivian Cash and she is played by Ginnifer Goodwin, who gives a passable performance though she gets very little respect in the story. She's complaining all the time (rightly so though as Johnny was touring and singing duets with June all the time, and he was popping pills like a maniac), crying and yelling, and the writers don't care to give her any dignity like Ray's did with Kerry Washington's Della Bea, Ray's wife who had to go through pretty much if not more (especially being black) than Vivian.

I love the fact that all of the actors portraying singers in the movie actually sang all their songs, including Joaquin and Reese who make the perfect singing voices and can really sing in tune and in the same style Johnny and June did. I'm guessing they also played the instruments themselves. The songs during the whole movie are excellent and very enjoyable. The sound department did a great job with the music for the movie. Sadly though, that's the only technical praise I can give the movie. Phedon Papamichael's cinematography is not impressive at all, and I really feel the movie needed some kind of style like Ray had which was that beautiful black and gray tone of smoking. Nothing like that here. Director James Mangold's camera work was also mediocre, poor even. Very disappointing coming from the man who gave us Cop Land and Girl, Interrupted, both great movies that had their own styles, even his Kate & Leopold did.

Co-written by Mangold and Gill Dennis, and based on a couple of Cash's autobiographies, this is a very good movie that does a great job in showing us who Johnny and June were and what they went through, but as a whole it fails because the supporting players are very underwritten, specially Ray, as Patrick could've use more time to develop the character, and Vivian, though if the role would've been bigger I don't know if Goodwin could've make it work. Still, the music and powerful lead performances make Walk the Line very worthy of a watch, and it's made me want to give Cash's discography a try. I'm sure I'll become a fan after a few listenings.