Good but unfaithful

Rating: 7/10 (6 August 2015)

Let me get this right out there - I am a Johnny Cash fan. So there are two aspects of this movie that are important to me: 1) Is it a faithful biopic about the man? 2) Is it a good entertaining movie? Look - I can live with this film as a great movie that tells a compelling story. The performances by the two leads are absolutely credible and at times they just blow you away.
I really enjoyed this film. It is dark in parts, it does a good job at hinting at the wild man in Johnny Cash without turning him into a villain or anything, and June Carter Cash is portrayed as just a wonderful woman (and I am sure that she was).
However - you do have to understand that there is artistic license here to make this stuff fit for cinema.
The film is relentlessly unfair to Johnny Cash's first wife. Vivian (his first wife) has been described as devoted to her husband, supportive of his music, and faithful throughout their time together. She was with Johnny throughout all the hard times of financial struggle, they had two kids together, and according to most sources they had a loving happy marriage. Had Cash not become the icon and the star that he did, that marriage probably would've held firm. In the film Vivian is portrayed as a woman who is never happy, who nags her husband for more, as possessive, as jealous and materialistic. It also suggests that Vivian criticised Johnny's music, undermined him, and tore down his dream.
In reality Vivian was supportive, hardworking, loyal and celebrated his love of music. I think Johnny Cash would be the first person to say that his own behaviour, his fame, his abuse of drugs, his time on the road, and his infidelity were unfair on Vivian.
Johnny Cash and Vivian Cash were married 12 years before they divorced, although it seems that this film trivialises that and just wants to treat her as a mistake that happened before June Carter arrived.
Let's be perfectly honest here June Carter really struggled with her conscience when it came to loving Johnny Cash. When they got together he was a very bad man - a drug addict, and a man with a wild and unpredictable temper. He got banned from the Grand Ole' Opry for smashing all the footlights. June herself was a married woman (twice previously) and having a religious background wrote 'Ring of Fire' to express how she felt about Cash - she thought she was going to hell.
I'm pretty sure that Johnny Cash would have portrayed either his relationship with Vivian nor his relationship with June in such a lopsided way. Nor do I think that Cash would've portrayed himself as such a victim when it came to the drugs.
Other scenes are made to fit the mood and the mojo of the film. For example when Cash saw Sam Phillips for the first time at Sun Records he didn't get signed and they didn't make a record.
Phillips did warn Cash off gospel music (saying that he couldn't sell it) but Cash certainly didn't play 'Folsom Prison Blues' to him. The track that caught Sam's attention was the far less incendiary (and more duke box friendly) 'Hey Porter'.
When Phillips did hear 'Folsom Prison Blues' he wasn't convinced by it immediately and didn't really look at putting it out until 'Cry Cry Cry' was done.
What the film doesn't really reflect is that Cash didn't just write those dark moody tracks - he wrote chart friendly commercial stuff too, like 'Get Rhythm' and so on.
You get the idea.
Anyway - it's a superb film, even if it isn't a completely sincere telling of the story.