Phoenix and Witherspoon are sensational

Rating: 8/10 (21 November 2005)

Biopic drama about the late country singer-songwriter, Johnny Cash. Structured very much like "Ray," last year's biodrama about Ray Charles, the storyline focuses on Cash's early career, up to his mid-30s, the creative period when he eventually achieved fame, culminating in 1968, after his marriage to June Carter and his musical comeback, fueled by the immense popularity of his album, "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison."
And, as in Ray, we also get footage sketching in a family-of-origin backstory. In Cash's case, it concerns the accidental childhood death of his older brother, who was favored by Cash's alcoholic father, Ray, at least as told here.
Director (and co-screenwriter) James Mangold ("Heavy;" "Copland;" "Girl, Interrupted") excels in working with actors, and he succeeds here spectacularly. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, as Cash and Carter, are brilliant, authentic, captivating. To top it off, both did all their own vocals on the Cash songs in this film; Witherspoon also had to master the autoharp. (The day after seeing the film, I listened to some early recordings of Cash's hits. Phoenix's vocal timbre and timing in this movie are stunningly similar to the young Cash's.) Robert Patrick is also riveting as Cash's dour and hypercritical father.
The narrative is almost a cliché of many other musicians' and artists' lives. Early promise and success. Increasing career hassles and pressures. Neglect and disruption of family life. Alcohol and drug addiction. A plunge in artistic productivity and popularity. And then, in Cash's case, redemption, another chance, abetted importantly by his co-performer and eventual second wife, June Carter Cash.
Perhaps the story lacks luster precisely because the narrative arc is so familiar, one we've heard so often in varying permutations, that it no longer has legs. The New Yorker magazine critic, David Denby, has written that Cash was an intriguingly complex man, but the nuances in his character are not developed in this film. (One item left out, for example, was that Cash apparently was a community college grad before he went into the Air Force during the Korean War.) If we had been offered more particulars about Cash, the narrative might well have been the stronger for it
This movie is at its best when music is being made. In the second hour, there is a long music-free period, when Cash was succumbing to the effects of amphetamines and other prescription drugs, and here the film drags. My biggest beef with many films about musicians (narrative or documentary) is the nervous tendency of the editors to cut off songs midway through a performance. I suppose I should be grateful that the editors for "Walk the Line" commit this transgression only a few times, and not as ham-handedly as in some other films. Still, with a film length of 136 minutes, there is no excuse for any song cuts at all.
It doesn't help "Walk" that, following the slavish biopic convention (think of "Pollock" or "Frida"), we are offered meaningless postage stamp cameos of some of Cash's musical associates and contemporaries (Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis.) But there are also some small yet very good supporting contributions from others: Dan John Miller and Larry Bagby (as Cash's original sidemen, Luther Perkins on guitar and Marshall Grant on bass), and Shooter Jennings playing his father, the late Waylon Jennings.
The parallels with Ray Charles don't end. Like Charles, Johnny Cash achieved no further artistic breakthroughs after his mid-30s. Instead, both men plateaued out and kept doing what they did best for decades to come, making lots of their familiar music and lots of money too. In the end, Charles and Cash both died too soon, in their early 70s. This film, like "Ray," doesn't achieve greatness, but Joaquin Phoenix's virtuoso performance, like Jamie Foxx's as Ray Charles, is as good as it gets. If you like Johnny Cash, don't miss this movie! My rating: 8/10 (B+). (Seen on 11/20/05). If you'd like to read more of my reviews, send me a message for directions to my websites.