Pick-up Line

Just saw WALK THE LINE yesterday, and find it hard to assess as a movie. I’m a Johnny Cash fan, fortunate enough to have seen him and June live shortly after the first American Recordings disc came out. But I haven’t read his autobiography, so I can’t and won’t speak to what is or isn’t true about what is shown onscreen.

However, I will say something about what isn’t shown, and I may have to actually agree with Dr. Ted Baehr for once. I remember Johnny, I think on vh-1 Storytellers, saying that people always wanted to write about him singing in prisons, but never wanted to write about him singing in church. The media loved his dark side, but didn’t care to publicize his born-again Christian side. The movie is the same — we see him walking nervously to church with June, but we don’t ever see him inside, let alone singing. On the other hand, the Folsom Prison concert is both the beginning and the climax of the film.

Mostly, we see Johnny doing bad stuff and getting messed up, with little inkling of the good, except of course the great music. But here the film lets us down too, by having Joaquin sing the songs himself. I understand, as an acting choice, why that was done, but it robs the music of its resonance. A combination of lip-sync and actor -sing worked for Val Kilmer in THE DOORS, and Jamie Foxx in RAY. I think it would have worked better for Joaquin. Reese Witherspoon, however, has a really beautiful singing voice.

The story, which mainly follows Cash from his time in the air force to his marriage to June Carter, is very non-structural. When it ended, I thought “Huh? But the story was just getting going!” Did they live happily ever after? What about Johnny’s later disgust with Nashville? Won’t we see him as an old guy getting re-introduced to hipsters via Bono and Rick Rubin? I suppose there could be a sequel in the works. Does Johnny ever truly confront his dad (played here by Robert “T-1000″ Patrick)? I guess I could read the book, huh.

Apart from the singing, Joaquin gets the Cash mannerisms down pretty well – there were moments I forgot it was Joaquin. Excpet that sometimes his lip scar is covered up with make-up and sometimes it isn’t, which gets distracting.

As for Reese…she does make you believe that she could redeem a man. I was terrified of the idea of her playing June, but it totally works. Johnny and June still seemed very much in love when I saw them live as old people, and Reese makes you believe in that.

Still, the movie doesn’t necessarily imply that her love alone will be enough to save Johnny, and I have to think the Christian faith had a lot to do with it (Johnny is one fo the few entertainers who, I think, can make Christianity seem cool). Most marriages I know that have actually lasted are ones where both partners have a strong faith of some kind, and therefore believe that marriage serves a higher purpose than just self-gratification.

To put it in Movieguide terminology: Johnny Cash had a biblical worldview. Director James Mangold has a romantic one.