Excellent Storytelling, Performances and Story

Rating: 10/10 (11 February 2006)

While I certainly can understand why Rosanne Cash and her sisters were uncomfortable seeing their mother Vivianne's marriage to their father Johnny meltdown on the big screen, Vivian's only 'failings' seemed to be that she simply wanted security for her family and didn't think a music career with Johnny on the road all the time was the way to achieve this, and she objected to his alcoholism, pill addiction and his flaunting groupies letters. Seems perfectly understandable to me. However; one can't deny that having witnessed their father's alcoholism, addiction and putting their lives very much on the back burner to his desire for performing- and seeing their parents have a physical altercation (if true) must have been a terrible price for these girls to have paid in their childhood! If anything, this movie made Johnny not Vivianne seem the worse parent and spouse.
It's a credit to the executive producer John Carter Cash that he was willing to have had his late father depicted this way- even to the extent of ending the movie before his OWN birth and childhood in which,by all accounts, he benefited from having, a much more attentive and present father than his older half-sisters had had in their childhoods. John Carter Cash didn't even have the end titles mention him by name but merely said that six months after the Ontario proposal, Johnny and June Carter were married and two years later had a son!
It's not just the vocal range and guitar playing skills that Phoenix did an amazing job with while playing Johnny but also the fact he was able to convey the often desperate nature he had of needing to perform to feel alive and how he considered the other performers and audience audience to be his family that he always loved yet argued with. Excellent idea to bookend the movie with highlights of his innovative Folsom Prison Live performance in which he bonded with the inmates as though he was a long lost brother. Not a false note in Phoenix's performance in relating in that bond!
Also,while Johnny rightly gave credit to June and her parents for rallying around him to help him deal with his addictions and put him back on steady ground. One must ask if one reason he accepted their help/intervention was due to him literally worshiping them from childhood onwards? No doubt Vivianne wanted to end these addictions and it's quite likely one or more groupies may have attempted to enact a 'salvation' fantasy by trying to get him quit- but Johnny didn't worship any of these women the way he had June!
Not surprising that Johnny would worship June as a boy(named J R) because he was told that the one means he was able to feel alive(his music) was 'nothing' by his father and,on the radio, he could hear on the radio a child close to his age being praised and venerated by ADULTS for the very thing his own father constantly dismissed. And Reese was very believable as someone who'd more than held her own from an early age in what was then unquestionably a male-dominated profession- yet never lost her femininity or compassion. Reese definitely has earned her Best Actress Nomination here for capturing June's intense spirit- yet keeping her human and not letting her be a two-dimensional stereotype.
Robert Patrick did an amazing job with a rather unlikable character of Ray Cash- and one can't help but wonder if the movie (and Johnny himself) may have toned down the REAL Ray Cash's hateful and belittling personality- though it must be said that even though Ray finally grudgingly admitted being envious of Johnny for being able to tell a story, he DID seem to be there for his granddaughters when their father wasn't.
This movie may not have every picayunish detail of Johnny's life depicted with flawless accuracy but I think it legitimately captured the essence of what made him tick as best as any movie could have.