Amazing performances...

Rating: 10/10 (30 November 2005)

As a life-long professional musician and music educator, I have always cast a suspicious eye on biopics based on the lives of famous musicians.
Will an actor with no musical training be authentic? Will the story be historically and artistically correct? Will the story capitalize only on the negative drama (since sex, drugs and rock'n'roll sell, they always seem to make movies about the tragic figures), or on the musician's contributions to the art?
Past attempts have either done a passable job or failed miserably at all of these - even the best of them ("Bird" being one standout) still contained errors that bother a real musician (fingers not moving correctly in sync with the overdubbed recording).
The only two movies I've seen recently to do an outstanding job of all of the above are "Ray," and now "Walk The Line." The fact that these actors learned to sing/play just for the role is an amazing feat - as a musician I can't imagine learning to act convincingly in such a short time, let alone learn well enough to impersonate a famous personality so well that it's Oscar material.
And the story - a well-balanced and historically accurate look at his career and that period in American music, and all that came with it.
Stellar! I highly recommend this film.