Walk the Line

Went to see Walk the Line yesterday, and fell in love with Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. Talk about a classic love story. Two people who fall in love but can't be together because they're both married. Not to mention that the hero is seriously addicted to pills, and is haunted by the death of his big brother.

It's not a perfect film. It took awhile to get going, and at first I wasn't sure about Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny, particularly during the audition for Sun Records, but then something happened. He met Reese Witherspoon's June Carter, and the movie took off.

From the moment backstage when her dress gets caught up in his guitar strings, you see his yearning for this woman that he's admired from childhood. From then on it's like he's a man possessed, driven to prove himself, popping pills like they're M&M's, neglecting his first family, touring all over the country, and in love with a woman he can't have.

Watching Reese and Joaquin perform as Johnny and June, you find it hard to believe that both of them haven't been singing all their lives. They have a naturalness together and a chemistry that can't be faked.

Yes, the movie suffers from biopic disease. I didn't notice that Waylon Jennings was a character in the movie, until towards the end when they're holed up in a motel doing drugs. Carl Perkins kind of got short shrift, and unfortunately Johnny's first wife Vivian comes across as a shrew at times compared to June. You get the feeling that she wished that he had stayed a door-to-door salesman instead of the legend that he became.

They fudge the timeline with June writing Ring of Fire, and then you never get to see her give him the song, he just performs it in concert later in the movie. There's another scene where she gives him a copy of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, and I would have liked to have seen what that meant to him, if he read it. Also, I would have liked to have seen more about how he got himself off pills the first time but those are just minor quibbles.

Not to knock Ray, which I adored, but there is something to be said for the fact that both Reese and Joaquin sang, instead of lip-synching. It allows the concert scenes a spontaneity that they wouldn't have had otherwise. Reese, more than Joaquin is the revelation in this movie. For once, she gets past the perky, driven persona that she's played in her last several movies. She's more womanly in this film. You can see why Johnny Cash fell in love with her. I do agree with the critics who say that you don't really get to know her apart from her interactions with Johnny apart from a brief scene in a local store. I would have liked to have known more about what it must have been like in such a conservative society to be a twice-divorced woman, and growing up on stage but then again the movie is called Walk the Line. It's Johnny Cash's story.

Even if you're not a Johnny Cash fan, I would recommend that you see this movie, and I can guarantee that you'll want to run out and buy a few CD's afterwards.

Grade: A-