I Walk the Line

Rating: 9/10 (28 March 2006)

A biopic with a romantic core is James Mangold's latest offering as he narrates the high's and lows of the late Johnny Cash and the woman who stood beside him through it all (while keeping him just out of arm's reach), June Carter.
Mangold's film has a great opening sequence: the Folsom Prison, site of his famed concert. Shot from the exterior it's a cold building, but the closer the shots take us, the louder the music becomes -- the rousing rockabilly before an anxious crowd awaiting to see their favorite performer, a man who had it all at one point and nearly lost it. This man is Johnny Cash, and a crucial event as a child shaped his fatalistic streak and set the stage for family dysfunction. Seen as a boy, then as a young man, Cash remains the same: a man with the boy inside trying to make things work and be someone to please his father. He has a family of his own, and works from door to door as a traveling salesman until he goes by a recording studio and gets the notion that he too could become a music performer. However, his audition bombs: Sam Phillips, musical producer, interrupts Cash's band's performance of "I Was There When it Happened" -- a song with religious overtones -- and tells Cash to perform his music like he feels it. He chooses "Folsom Prison Blues" and from a slow start, the song gains momentum until it reaches a frenzy... and a legend is born.
It's the stuff of every biopic: their humble start, their incursion into music and initial rejection until they strike the note which makes them famous, chart topping hits and raving concerts, debauchery, a pivotal moment which send them spiraling down, hitting rock bottom, the slow climb back up from scratch, redemption. It's all here. If it weren't for the performances of Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon and this massive fireball of energy that virtually leaps out of the screen in its many musical moments, it would be another by-the-numbers story that wouldn't even seem out of place in a VH1 "Behind the Music" series. Both of them ignite the screen whenever they are performing, together or alone, and inhabit their roles without a seam showing through. From their "Meet Cute" moment where June shows her comedic side -- a facade hiding her own inner fears of being a failure -- to the later events in which Cash will find himself relying on her (and her family) to simply live, they are perfect in bringing this love story to light. We believe that in essence, Johnny Cash and June Carter were the couple who were meant to be, and that's what makes it worthwhile to see their lives on display in this great film.