Walk the Line

I wear the black for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me.

Johnny Cash- The Man in Black


That lyric, and indeed that entire song, which sums up a major part Johnny Cash's life and provides the supreme illumination into The Man in Black, is not even included in the film.

Imagine Loretta Lynn's story without Sissy Spacek singing Coal Miner's Daughter . That is what we have with Walk The Line .

Johnny Cash's story is one of redemption; a musician with one foot in country music and the other in the turbulent waters of the newly emerging rockabilly, a current that nearly swept him away with the power of it's seductive vices. But this formulaic film glosses over the lows that Cash hit, and in doing so saps the highs of any cinematic power. George Bailey has a grittier and more satisfying fall and rebirth in It's A Wonderful Life than Joaquin Phoenix is allowed to muster here, and what should have been a gold-record tribute to an American icon ends up as a hastily pressed B-side.

Cash found his salvation in the love of a woman who sprang from the family that literally invented country music and became that early form's biggest and most influencial stars. The Carter Family was the voice of rural America with their songs of love lost and found, mountain cabins, and very importantly, songs of religious faith. These were the songs Johnny Cash grew up listening to.These were the roots of June Carter Cash and their strength was vital to the real life story, but this film has no interest in these ties, other than a brief passage of Reese Witherspoon singing Wildwood Flower, which I'm sure few in the audience recognized anyway.


Much has been made of the musical performances of the actors, who did their own singing and held a few guitars, and to be fair, Phoenix does a reasonable job of approximating Cash and Witherspoon is actually quite good. Jackson is a nice number, for example. But all their hard work is wasted on dull script, barely fleshed out characters and unimaginative lackluster direction by James Mangold who proves that an MFA from Columbia does not a director make. Despite it's $28 million dollar production budget, I was glad I went to see this at the $1.00 theatre.

This is a movie about music, love, fame and the effects of all three on a troubled man who managed to rise, fall, overcome a host of demons and addictions and come out not only alive, but on top and with love and marriage intact.

Now that is a three-chord plot to be sure, but as Harlan Howard said, country music is three chords and the truth. Walk The Line gives us one G chord with a busted string and a wink.

That makes for a song that dissatifies