My favourite musical biopic

Rating: 10/10 (11 January 2016)

Walk The Line, James Mangold's loving, triumphant tribute to the troubled Man In Black, is my favourite musical biopic and a gleaming testament to the inspirational acting and singing abilities of both Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. Phoenix plays Johnny Cash over the course of his rocky life with stern gravitas and an appropriate baritone drawl that personifies the legendary singer/songwriter impeccably. The film follows his path from humble beginnings on a rural farm with his family, to his eventual lightning in a bottle rise to fame, as well as his star crossed romance and eventual matrimony with fellow singer June Carter (Witherspoon). The main reason this works so well is the absolutely flawless singing by the two leads. They slay every number with uncanny skill that makes you nostalgic for all those songs. Phoenix captures the pent up, smoldering outsider in Cash, a somber outlaw whose dark impulses constantly waged war with his kind heart and magnetic aura. Witherspoon is a whip crack wonder as June, a woman so deeply in love with Cash that it scares her to act on her gut emotions, waves of complexity and intuition washing through her beautiful performance. Ginnifer Goodwin finds the understandable frustration in Cash's maligned first wife. Robert Patrick is a show stopping standout as Johnny's father Ray, a hard bitten man whose soul has been soured by an early family tragedy. Patrick delves deep and gives him a heartbreaking human spark that dulled by a saddened edge. Musical biopics don't often get as spot on as this, and the songs, performances, production design and direction, make the whole film pure magic.