Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, and more ...
Director: James Mangold
Genre: Drama
johnny cash is one of america's most legendary musicians. though i would not hear about him until the movie, cash is unmistakably a country artist with a class of his own. he seems to manage to appeal to a much broader audience, just never within my time period, or was i just too ignorant? but thank god to "walk the line", i'm able to see the grandeur of his existence in the music industry.
coming with very little information about cash's life and music, i didn't expect anything from the movie. i'm coming as someone who wants to learn who cash was and how he reached the stardom and how he found love with june carter. the movie entertainingly showed his life and his struggle to pursue his career and found love. director james mangold manages to steer away from the maudlin and melodramatic and in the process comes up with a good, straight-forward biopic of johnny cash and june carter. from this movie, both joaquin phoenix and reese witherspoon were given a recognition on their acting, the latter even took home an oscar for it. their presence really serves really well and gets you stuck to the screen. phoenix not only uses his own voice to sing the songs, he uses his own psychic voice to creep inside of cash to reveal the portrait of the character he's portraying.
witherspoon also does her own singing and because i know a lot less of carter's life, manufactures and makes real a character that is both simple and straightforward as well as one who longs for her own place in the world. she is less wounded than cash but equally on the lookout for personal and professional validation, especially comparing to her talented sister.
walk the line is not the best movie ever made but it certainly is not the worst. the best biopics require strong, incandescent performances at their core and this movie has that in spades with phoenix and witherspoon's revolutionary interpretations of cash & carter. enter the world of "walk the line" with an open mind and heart and you will be rewarded with both a noble and novel interpretation of two lives and two people who dared to be talented and blessed in a world that often attempted to stamp out and diffuse those that were different in favor of mediocrity.
