Long legged guitar pickin' man...

Rating: 10/10 (20 November 2005)

... is how the real June Carter refers to her husband, Johnny Cash, in a song covering the film's closing credits. He counters by calling her a "Big Mouthed Woman" in a famous duet of theirs. That was a very satisfying end to a wonderful film. It seems to have begun some time ago, before the deaths of Johnny Cash and June Carter-Cash, who each personally picked both Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon to play them in the film before they died only four months apart in 2003.
I went to see this film with high expectations fueled by all the pre-release hype and trailers I'd seen for a long while. For a change I was not disappointed. This is truly a wonderful film. Although it definitely deals with unpleasant subjects such as the psychological and emotional abuse Johnny Cash suffered as a child from his abusive, alcoholic father (played with real talent by the versatile Robert Patrick) and his later fall into pills and alcohol as a result, much like his old friend Elvis Presley; who the film illustrates as having started Cash down the same road abusing prescription drugs that led to his own, later death.
This was also a bit of a personal memory trip for me, both from a similarity to some of our life's more ugly experiences and for the backdrop his music and the others of that Sun Record's miracle group in the 50's played to my own life. Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Elvis Pressley were all musicians I listened to primarily from about 1957 onward for years, in no small part because their music spoke to me in a very personal way (Johnny, Elvis Presley and Hank Williams are the only performers to have been inducted into both the Country Music and Rock And Roll Halls of Fame). So to see this period of their lives depicted on screen was a personal experience that I am sure has to have colored my opinions of this to at least a small degree. However, I don't think even my beginning prejudice would cause me to like the film were it not extremely good - as a bad film of something so personal would have caused me to dislike it far more. Having said that...
I was transfixed by the personal presence of the wonderfully talented and beautiful Reese Witherspoon, who plays June Carter-Cash in the movie, much to Mrs. Cash's credit. Her performance has to be ranked with some of the finest I've ever seen in a long lifetime of movie going. She was completely convincing in her role and played every emotion to a well rounded "T". Even more impressive, she did a stellar, professional job of covering all of June Carter's songs (she also had to learn to play the auto-harp), including her very surprising on screen chemistry with Joaquin Phoenix, who played the film's main character, Johnny Cash. Even with the danger of it sounding like a tired cliché in today's Hollywood, if she doesn't win, let alone be nominated for an Oscar, there are no gods...
For his part, Joaquin Phoenix was tremendous in the primary role. Even knowing Phoenix was the one actually singing the songs in the film going in, it was very hard to not believe it was Cash himself singing as I watched him on screen, he was just that good. He performed all of the songs himself without being dubbed and learned to play guitar from scratch just for this role. In fact, I think the real danger here for Joaquin Phoenix is that his portrayal was so very exactingly just like the real Cash that people won't notice where reality stops and the magic he creates on screen begins. He was truly mesmerizing in this role, so good it's hard to find the right superlatives to heap the praise high enough.
Not to be outdone by any means, a huge amount of credit has to go to the screen writing, by Gill Dennis and James Mangold, who also directed. The script was wonderfully done, inviting the audience into the life of Cash in a way that made me, at least, feel more like I was an eyewitness to the real events rather than just watching a film.
James Mangold's directing was wonderful, perhaps even brilliant. His concept of having both Phoenix and Witherspoon record Cash and Carter's music was a masterstroke of genius, assisted in no small part by the surprising talent of both stars, who may now have a second career to fall back on. Their music made the film in a way that nothing else could have. That both Cash and Carter lived their lives to bring music to the world could not have been so respectfully portrayed without such convincing delivery of the very object of their life's work. Both stars should be applauded for even having given the effort to trying, let alone succeeding in such a great way.
The other actors did a great job of their performances as well. Both Tyler Hilton as Elvis and Waylon Payne (Wallon Jennings' godson) who played Jerry Lee Lewis were standouts. Waylon Jennings son, Shooter Jennings, also made an appearance playing his father.
Last but not least, the costumes, set and art direction gave a rich canvas to the talented cinematography of Phedon Papamichael. Sound, sound editing, music in all respects and the perfect, wonderfully understated makeup for Ms. Witherspoon should all get mentions at Oscar time.
Sony, Universal, Focus Features, Columbia Pictures, Paramount, and Warner Bros. who are all said to have passed on the project, should be kicking themselves now.