"This one's for the warden!"

Rating: 8/10 (5 November 2009)

About a third of the way into James Mangold's Walk the Line, divorcée June Carter (Witherspoon) hands her touring partner Johnny Cash (Phoenix), then unhappily married to first wife Vivian, a copy of Kahil Gibran's 'The Prophet' as a parting gift. This is what Gibran has to say on the subject of marriage: "Sing and dance together and be joyous, but each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music." We never find out whether Cash ruminated on this passage at length but it's a pretty accurate summation of the heaven and hell relationship that will shortly unspool across the screen.
A film of extraordinary merit, beauty and resonance: Walk the Line is a triumph. If the film follows the usual trajectory of all such biopics, from rise to fall to rise again, the veracity of the material (aside from a few contractions for dramatic license) isn't in question. This is a real home movie, adapted from a pair of Cash autobiographies, exec produced by his son John Carter-Cash, and developed over seven years in close co-operation with Johnny and June before their passing in 2003, four months apart.
Though imbuing proceedings with suitably biblical conceits - black dogs and crows abound, foreshadowing doom - Mangold ties these tumultuous lives to a more earthbound plot; a ridiculously moving love story culminating in Cash's marriage proposal live on stage to a recalcitrant Carter in February 1968. "I've asked you to marry me 40 different ways and it's time you came up with a fresh answer." Fortunately for Cash, the answer was in the positive (always leave the audience on a high), but it took years of heated denials and tortured soul-searching to finally pitch up at this conclusion.
Cash picked Phoenix to play himself, presumably recognising a fellow traveller, and it's true both men have history in common; a common intensity, religious upbringings and "good" brothers dying on them. However, unlike the majority of music biopics (notably Taylor Hackford's Ray or Alex Cox's Sid And Nancy) this is one where the leading man looks nothing like the musician he is playing. The same applies to the various characters who pop up on Cash's journey, including a pre-war Elvis (glimpsed backstage in shadow, gobbling chilli fries). Even TV's 'Stars In Their Eyes' has a higher hit rate than this. Phoenix, particularly during Cash's later years, neither physically resembles Cash (he's significantly shorter, for starters) and, though sporting a similarly deathless bass profondo, doesn't sound very much like him either. Yet, it's the actor's best performance to date.
Phoenix appears to be all but channelling his subject; swaggering or hunched over his guitar in the classic pose. A scene in which Cash pulls a sink off a wall wasn't scripted: Phoenix did in fact pull it right off the wall. No surprise, then, that the actor was obliged to check himself into rehab when filming finished, emotionally drained, with a drink problem.
For her part, Witherspoon, (a dead ringer, vocally and physically, for the big-haired vaudevillian) is astounding as June Carter, Johnny's muse, co-singer, carer and wife by turns; her on-screen chemistry with Phoenix, nuclear. The concert sequences, driven by that pure Sun sound ("steady as a train, sharp as a razor"), are fantastically exhilarating - and the legendary Folsom Prison gig, outstanding. If your eyes aren't leaking or your feet aren't tapping by the end, you're almost certainly dead.