Walk the line is a sweet, meandering biopic on the darkness of Johnny Cash’s life, a man who was never as simple as he looked. Starkly different from the brutal and painful life of Ray Charles, Cash’s life was never a cakewalk, and *Walk the Line *is a pretty wonderful movie with some amazingly honest and perceptive performances. Johnny Cash was never an easy person to understand, and that was something which June Carter, his lifelong love, and companion knew it best. After all, it was she who finally did prevent him from throwing his life away to cynicism and drugs and helped him grow up. The movie does well to exemplify the glaring contradictions within Cash’s own personality, contradictions which intensified as his cynical view of the world overpowered him.
The film is designed in epic-mode. It opens with one of the key events in Cash’s early life, an event which would scar his brain and thoughts for life. The film then shifts focus to the older Cash, a man who starts a band named the *Tenessee Two, *with two other musicians with rather obviously amateurish styles. After a successful audition with one of the not-so-prominent record producers of that time, Cash finds himself on tour with June Carter, of the singing Carter family, played immaculately by Reese Witherspoon. While on the one hand, Cash becomes a largely successful and swooned-over star, drug-use and depression pray on his mind, reducing his personal life to absolute mess. Everything he does seems to drag him down, even his romance with June, and of course, his faltering relationship with his wife. The film follows his life, mostly consisting of emotional turmoil, a few groundbreaking shows, and some major flops, as June tries to repair the man she loves; and finally ends with his very famous show at the Folsom Prison.
Elvis Presley once said about Cash’s voice – it’s as deep as a river, something that comes right from within the heart of the earth. Any film about Johnny Cash, and with so many of his songs sung uninterrupted would have been a solid bore and a dud without the magic of his slightly quavering baritone; and Joaquin Phoenix nails it in this movie. Phoenix does all the singing in this movie, and all the guitar playing too; which is no mean feat by any standards. June Carter once described Cash’s voice as ‘sharp like a razor, steady like a train’. Perhaps there is no better compliment to Cash as a musician, and Reese Witherspoon, more famous for sloppy snuff movies finally gets into her own as the good woman who has taken it upon herself to change Johnny Cash, and heal his wounds for ever.
It’s interesting to see Cash and June falling in love with each other every time they go up on stage together, and the attraction which they feel on stage is palpable, nothing compared to when they are lying side by side in a hotel room, away from prying eyes. The long chapter of Cash’s life when he spends most of his time trying to battle drug addiction caused by an unsupportive father, and trying to deal with the loss of his more-adored elder brother. The visit to Cash’s traumatized past is brief, and gives ample idea of the reasons for Cash’s turning up *mixed up, *as his mother quite accurately summarizes.
The film does have its own flaws, and some of these flaws are inherent to biopics which try to portray, with some amount of honesty, the sense of loss and depression which invariably all musicians go through at various times in their lives. It is also a tad too long, but the length is good in a way, since it gives the characters to develop themselves and come into their own, preventing this from becoming just another uplifting story of a man’s battle against his own thoughts and demons and coming out triumphant.
What finally lifts the film is Joaquin Phoenix amazing acting prowess. He completely immerses himself in the character of Johnny Cash, dark, brooding and perpetually depressed, almost comical. The scar on his upper lip just makes him look every bit the troubled singer. Everything about his acting suggests a close study of Johnny Cash’s style and persona, and a detailed reading of the book which actually inspired the movie – “Man in Black”. Reese Witherspoon plays a wonderful part as the person who was enamored with Cash all right, but always managed to keep a distinct wall between her private and public lives. Reese is unfailingly funny and immensely likeable all through the movie, more so when she goes on stage, but at no point of time do you feel, that she’s just there in the movie just to sing well and look pretty.
In the end, it’s just a wonderful experience to see Cash’s life through a movie which would have been yet another documentary hadn’t it been for the wonderfully performed songs and the superb acting.
It’s perhaps apt to end with one of Cash’s most famous lines from the song *Folsom Prison Blues, *which shows the sinner’s boast and guilt at the same time so very beautifully…
I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die
.
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When I hear the whistle blowin’, I hang my head and cry…