perhaps best movie scene i've ever viewed

Rating: 10/10 (30 September 2007)

"Walk the Line" has one of the finest scenes i've ever seen in any movie. toward the end, we see Johnny hosting a family gathering. now that he's been off substances for awhile and been behaving like a responsible husband and father, Cash and his pappy are finally reconciled.
Cash's two young daughters are trying to talk to their grandfather through styrofoam cups attached by a string. but, neither they nor their grandfather can hear anything through the cups, because the string is hanging loose.
Johnny explains to his pappy that the string has to be pulled taut for it to conduct sound between the cups. Johnny then walks away, suggesting his pappy tell his granddaughters a story.
the father, looking utterly perplexed, says he doesn't know any stories. Johnny shoots back: why don't you tell 'em about the time you built a boat and saved your family from a flood? (the incident inspired the Cash tune "Five Feet High and Rising".) this scene revealed the source of what had up until then been the father's lifelong resentment of the son. every boy in America knows the string has to be pulled taught to carry sound between two cups. the only conclusion to be drawn from the father's ignorance of this simple fact of childhood is that he had been too poor to have had a childhood. growing up in the Mississippi Delta, the father probably started working in the cotton fields around age 5 (the same age as his son Johnny later would).
but, by contrast with his father, Johnny had never wanted to do anything but play. he was fishing instead of helping his brother when the older boy (their father's favorite) was killed in an accident cutting wood at the saw mill. as an adult Johnny hadn't worked at a regular job -- he played the guitar instead. when he wasn't playing the guitar, he was playing around with alcohol, drugs, and women he wasn't married to.
being of Scottish descent, the father was the sort of man who'd have preferred having boiling oil poured into his ear, rather than ever brag about himself. whereas Johnny's career was about self-promotion, to the point of wanting fans to think of him as some kind of career outlaw, which disgusted the father.
so, even though the father was the kind of man who, like Noah, had saved his family by building a boat with the flood waters rising, when asked he couldn't think of any story to tell -- just the opposite of Johnny.
an incredibly rich, yet economical, scene.