>>REVIEW
WALK THE LINE
Opens Friday, November 18
Check Listings
At the outset it might appear that the rock-star biopic is a genre that needs no other entries – at least this year. With the slightly fictionalized take on 50 Cent, Get Rich or Die Tryin', currently in theatres, and the image of last year's Ray (which earned Jamie Foxx a best actor Oscar) still looming large, Walk the Line arrives to tell yet another larger-than-life story about a music legend.
While Walk the Line is a somewhat typical tale – it's the classic American celebrity yarn of rags to riches, obscurity to stardom and finally drugs to sobriety – it's expertly driven by a stunning performance from its star, Joaquin Phoenix, and the chilling, yet irresistible music of its subject, Johnny Cash.
Subtle and understated where other biopics are flashy, Walk the Line is at once an endearing love story and welcome fable about a wild star who was coming into his own when rock itself was emerging as the symbol of rebellion and defiance in America.
Beginning with Cash's early childhood in Arkansas – he grew up dirt poor with a domineering father and a sweet but overpowered mother – Walk the Line begins with the fateful death of the would-be star's older brother. Blamed for the incident by his dad, it would haunt Cash for the rest of his life, and he would always feel like the unwanted, unreliable son.
That Cash was driven by feelings of inadequacy and a desperate need for love and approval, is something that quickly comes to the fore. After struggling as a wannabe country singer, Cash takes a job as a door-to-door salesman with his first wife in Nashville while writing songs with his early band, The Tennessee Two.
He's sent away from the studio of Sun Records because his first attempt, as Carl Phillips put it, doesn't sound as if it comes from his heart. When Cash returns with a soulful take called "Hey, Porter," one that Phoenix tears into with the deep baritone and desperate longing that typifies Cash's best work, the movie really takes off.
Much of Walk the Line is given over to performances, which is a blessing, since Phoenix uncannily channels Cash onstage. He does his own singing and raises his guitar in front of the mic like a reincarnated version of the Man in Black. The rest of the film is largely devoted to chronicling the enduring love story between Cash and his would-be wife, June Carter (Reese Witherspoon). Falling in love with the fellow musician on tour (Carter was part of a family of singers popular in country music during the '50s), Cash intermittently struggles with his addiction to painkillers and his philandering ways. A well-meaning Christian who also struggles to come to terms with religion, his infidelities and drug use plague him as he both tries to be "a better man" and convince Carter to give in and finally marry him.
Witherspoon is a delight as the feisty Carter (she literally holds her own as one of the few females on tour with a group of cavorting, womanizing male rockers), and Walk the Line offers a wonderful peak inside the world of the first rock stars. On tour with youngsters like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, Cash was among the first to typify the rock-star lifestyle of too much booze and too many women. |
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