Walk the Line

Walk the Line, is the highly acclaimed Johnny Cash biopic, starring Joaquin Pheonix and Reese Witherspoon, based directly on Cash's autobiography. It's a compelling story, which is very well told, containing an explosive mixture of fame, music, betrayal, breakdown, marriage, unfaithfulness, divorce, passion, and loaded with as many hopeful redemptive themes as it is with moral ambiguities.

Joaquin Pheonix' performance is excellent - enough of a growl for authenticity without allowing it to degenerate into a mere impersonation of this often troubled man. The relationship with his father (Robert Patrick) is well explored, as is the effect of the childhood death of his brother, in the first of many close parallels with that other recent celebrated musical bio, Ray.

Reese Witherspoon is fantastic as June Carter Cash, attractive, charming and with an uncanny ability to deliver the songs in a convincing way too. It's a shame that the script-writers didn't give Witherspoon more to work with in terms of exploring the darker side if her character, the turmoil, remorse and divorces only hinted at, where there was much more to say.

The best part of the story is the tale of how June Carter - with the help of her parents, rescued Cash from a drug-addiction fuelled breakdown which was destroying him and his career. The scene in which they drive drug-dealers away from the house at gun-point while Cash is going through cold-turkey is a great story of the protective nature of love. When Cash emerges 'clean' from the ordeal, Carter tells him, "God's given you another chance" - and takes him to church. The faith element of Cash's life and songs was strangely absent from this however, and there is little mention of the Cash who would go on to record the apocyliptic When The Man Comes Around.

The tragedy of the story is the jettisoning of Cash's first wife, Vivienne, in times of constant touring and his growing obsession with Carter. She is evicted from his life and from the film, but whose tragic desertion lingers in the background muddying the redemptive narrative with awkward complexity. We are asked to see the Cash-Carter relationship as one of true redemptive love, but asked to forget that there was a victim in the narrative too. Was there any hope or joy for Vivienne? We are not simply not told anything more.

The message the film tries to convey is of the redemptive power of true love. Cash, it seems, could only be free from his demons when the object of his infatuation, became committed to him. Pursue the infatuation at all costs, it argues, and become committed to it. Autobiographies are always self-justifying to a degree, and this no doubt colours the message. However, the film still ends up perpetuating the great Hollywood love myth; that feelings lead commitments. The truth so often is that mere states of emotional intensity are no basis upon which to shatter commitments made and forge new ones. The art of furnishing the existing commitments with passionate emotions is a more wise and tested path - and the absolute opposite of the 'Hollywood Love Myth', writ large in Walk The Line.

So this is a really good film, well made, well acted, a fascinating story well-told. It has a strong underlying current of the redemptive power of true love (Cash and Carter were married for 35 years until her death); but told through the tangled relationships and moral ambiguities of a complex man. Well worth watching.