Walk the Line: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

(Originally published 2005)

We've walked this line before.

Big movie, great cast, Oscar buzz, all riding the rails of a story based on a famous musician's life. At the end of 2004, two artists received similar treatment--Ray Charles in the excellent biopic of his life, "Ray," and Bobby Darin in the underwhelming "Beyond the Sea," which didn't exactly create a splish splash at the box office, regardless of Kevin Spacey's efforts to the contrary.

"Walk the Line," on the other hand, will generate such a splash, and it's a wave that likely will extend into the heart of the pending awards season.

The film, which James Mangold ("Identity," "Cop Land," "Girl, Interrupted") based on a screenplay he co-wrote with Gill Dennis, follows the defining years of Johnny Cash's life.

Mangold takes us from Cash's difficult childhood in Arkansas, in which a pivotal event changed him and his relationship with his family forever, to his rise to fame, his struggle with drug addiction (thanks to an introduction to Elvis), his marital problems with first wife, Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin), the great love he felt for June Carter (Reese Witherspoon), and the defining moment in which the grayness of an otherwise muddled, self-destructive life lifted during his knockout, 1968 show at Folsom State Prison.

There, in front of 2,000 cheering inmates, all of Cash's frustrations and successes, his disappointments and dark humor, his rage, loneliness and failures--particularly his failures, which he wore like badges on his black sleeves--allowed him to connect with these men in a performance that arguably was the best of his career.

Thing is, as with so many biopics focused on musicians, Mangold's movie is essentially a film about overcoming addiction in order to further one's path to legend. That familiarity would have done the movie no favors had Mangold not had the strength of subtlety, which shows throughout, and especially the terrific performances from his cast, who transcend formula by allowing audiences to fully invest themselves in what matters--the budding, turbulent relationship between Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) and June.

Giving their best performances to date, Phoenix and Witherspoon each do their own singing here while possessing the sort of chemistry that sets their particular ring of fire alive.

What Mangold and his performers understand is that there are times in one's life when the most difficult thing to do is to give yourself over to someone, to open your heart and trust that person, in spite of all signs suggesting that you'd be a fool to do so. This was the case for June Carter, who feared what marriage to Johnny Cash could mean, and Witherspoon gets it right, nailing the woman's anxiety and apprehension. We all know the outcome, but it's the building up to that moment that's so compelling and, in the end, what "Walk the Line" really is all about.

Grade: A-