Went to see Walk the Line yesterday with my father. Walk the Line, the life story of Johnny Cash starts with his life as a poor Arkansas child growing up on a farm. James Mangold, the movies director chose to start with this to show the strong relationship Cash had with his older brother Jack. Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) born with the name JR, was born in 1932. The story picks up in 1944 when JR goes fishing one day and his brother Jack has to cut boards for a saw mill. Jack is caught in the machine and mangled. JR's alcoholic father Ray Cash (Robert Patrick) comes looking for JR asking him "Where have you been?" in a demeaning manner. In the movie Mangold makes it seem as if Jack dies the same day he comes home from the hospital. In actuality, Jack suffers for a week and then dies. Their father, in a drunken stooper one night, blames JR for Jack's death and tells him the wrong son died. JR never forgives his father for this.
The movie jumps about 6 or 7 years into the future when JR is leaving for the army. When enlisting into the army, they refuse to accept initials as a name so he is dubbed John. I was actually disappointed because Mangold failed to mention anything about Johnny's high school career or how he learned how to play guitar. It was almost like, hey, this guy just picked it up one day and knew how. While in the army, Johnny writes his first song "Folsum Prison Blues" after seeing the movie "Inside the Walls of Folsum Prison." We then learn of Johnny's high school sweetheart Vivian whose father disapproves of their relationship. Johnny returns from Germany and marries Vivian. Cash sells appliances until one day he has the guts to approach Sun Records and try to produce a record. In a dramatic scene, Johnny returns home late one night after recording and tells Vivian he finally made a record. Mangold portrays Vivian as a hard working wife, but very unsupportive of his career as a musician. They're both ecstatic with the production of a record though.
Cash begins to tour shortly after the song "Cry Cry Cry" begins to gain prestige. His next album "Folsum Prison Blues" makes the country top 5 and the song "I Walk the Line" is Johnny's first #1 song on the country billboard. While touring there is the inevitable fall into drugs and alcohol that so many singers and entertainers fall into. Mangold chose to portray this as a sort of peer pressure venture that Cash got wrapped up into because Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and the other guys all did it. Cash quickly became dependant on the amphetamines he was taking and later moved onto barbituates as well.
It was also on tour that Cash met June Carter. Cash's marriage life had taken a sour turn even though he and his wife Vivian had recently had a child named Rosanne. Cash would have 3 other daughters. Cash and Carter have a one night affair in the movie and later he and his wife split. Johnny buys a place near Hendersonville, Tenn. Johnny finally confronts his father on Thanksgiving day while jacked up on pills about the blame he placed on Johnny for his brother's death. Ray only says "I quit drinking a long time ago."
June stays that day to help Johnny at the request of her own parents and she helps him to kick his drug addiction. Cash credited her up to his death with helping him get straight. 1968, Johnny proposes to June one last time on stage and she finally says yes after rejecting him several times before. They were married a week later and remained married for 35 years when June passed away due to complications with surgery.
The film altogether was a pretty nice film. Unfortunately, "Ray" last year's big box office hit holds a very similar plot line and this film will most likely go underrated. Reese Witherspoon plays an excellent and sassy June Carter. Probably nobody better for the role. Phoenix could have been a more convincing Cash though. There were just times when I didn't believe him. I also wish Mangold would have explained the significance of Johnny's brother Jack. He shows us the horror of his brother's death but fails to relate it later in the movie. Johnny was very close to his brother and spoke of his anticipation of meeting with him in heaven. We also never learn how he learned to play guitar either or how music affected his early life. There were just small bits and pieces of Cash's life that were left out that could have made the movie much more interesting. I dislike the lack of any real footage as well. Good directors can incorporate live footage in an artistic fashion to add flare and originality to a movie. Overall, I would give this movie a 3.5 out of 5. It's a good movie to take a date too even if you're not a country music fan.
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