AT THE MOVIES WITH DILLON KIMMEL
Growing up a sharecropper’s life was never easy for little Johnny Cash. He idolized his older brother, Jack, while growing up. Jack was bigger, stronger, and vowed to be a pastor one day to spread the “good news” to all who needed it. Johnny loved music. He wasn’t good at much but he knew every song in his momma’s praise book. A singer’s life would never bring money home to a family trying to survive in Arkansas during the Great Depression. And his father let him know it. A frequently drunken but hard-working man, Ray Cash was as rough and gruff as they come, and he let it be known that Jack was his favorite child. But despite frequent hardships, Johnny was content with his role in an otherwise happy family. That is, until the accident that changed his life forever.
“God took the wrong boy.”
Those words were seared into Johnny’s psyche and would scar him further than any physical blow. Jack was dead. His father blamed him. And suddenly Johnny was left standing alone.
The Air Force didn’t fix things. Johnny simply spent his free time on the base learning to strum the guitar and writing songs of grief and despair.
Marrying Vivian didn’t help things. Immediately after Johnny left the Air Force, the two moved to Memphis to pursue his love of music in a town that is breeding young stars left and right (i.e., Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Orbison). Johnny signs with Sun Records and begins to tour the country with his band and other up and coming artists, while his marriage back home begins to disintegrate.
Popping pills certainly didn’t fix things. To keep up with the mounting pressure on the road and at home, Johnny turns to drugs, eventually becoming dependent on them. His physical health deteriorates and his friends soon begin to notice.
All of this sets the stage for Johnny meeting June Carter, the beautiful Gospel singer with a wicked sense of humor and pretty good pipes. The two fall for each other immediately, but June is just getting over a nasty divorce and Johnny is still married. Growing success, growing addiction, and an immoral relationship that continues to escalate lead Johnny to walk a fine line. A line that is destined to break. And once it does, the road to perdition will become much easier for Johnny than the one to salvation.
Wow, what a movie. Walk the Line exemplifies everything a biographical movie should be.
Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix are breathtaking playing the legendary Johnny Cash and June Carter-Cash. Both carry their character so well, and Phoenix even exhibits a striking facial similarity to the real Cash.
Witherspoon delivers an Oscar-worthy performance, complete with a perfect southern drawl. You could just tell she was in complete control of her character. So convincing. So lovable. So believable. The audience aches with her as she struggles to free Johnny from his addiction and cheers for her when she finally accepts Johnny’s proposal.
Similarly, Phoenix may also be up for an Oscar come next year. His voice is perfect for the role, and he is portrayed accurately as an aching son, addict, adulterer, and ultimately, as a God-fearing Christian man. The audience loves him and hates him all at the same time as they watch his journey to hell and back again.
No person can sum up Cash’s struggles better than the legendary songwriter himself. In his autobiography, Man in Black, the late Cash described his flirtation with damnation.
“How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.”
No, Johnny it is not. And thank God you made it out of that chasm, so that we can have the pleasure of seeing your life played out so beautifully on film.
Five stars.
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