James Mangold
Walk The Line

"Walk the Line" is the film about the bio (the first part, to be precise) of Johnny Cash, a rock-country songwriter from the '60s.

The film begins and ends with Folsom Prison, where Cash (here a commendable Joaquin Phoenix) held the famous '68 concert.

The life is thus recounted in a long flashback: childhood, success, decline, and recovery follow one another enriched by the love story (at times obsession) with singer June Carter. Despite knowing about the Oscar given to Witherspoon/June Carter (in my opinion convincing but not deserving a statuette) and the numerous nominations, I thought it would follow the clichéd formula of the posthumous myth-creating film (Cash passed away in 2003): BUT NO.

For once, a 'musical' biopic where the image remains human and not a dream or an otherworldly deity. The Man in Black with the stern look can't save himself from success mixed with painful memories and troubles, except thanks to a woman (that's right): his brother Jack's death blamed on him by his father, the bad relationship with his parents, the first wife who doesn't understand his love for music, the distance from his daughters due to tours, the initial reluctance of the woman he loves, are all elements that lead him to the sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll lifestyle (not the playful one of fancy rocker gadgets). So you reach the last 20 minutes of the film with the bitter taste of the dark period of amphetamine overdose and outbursts of anger (enough to unhinge sinks!) before the artistic and personal "rebirth" rightly treated without too many frills (straight as a train, sharp as a razor, like his music).

Step by step, the film aims to echo what Cash says in "Walk the Line," the song giving the film its title: one must strive to live rightly, despite the problems. The only element that left me puzzled concerns the Cash/June relationship. June, the singer he followed since he was a child, when he listened to the radio with his brother, the woman he wants at least one week a month in concert with him. I didn’t know Cash (and I'd like to see), nor read books about him, but perhaps June’s figure was a bit too fictionalized (worthy of the indeed pathetic Italian title: "Quando l’amore brucia l’anima" - "When Love Burns the Soul").

It's true that Cash calls her his angel, but at some point, it almost seems like everything depends on the singer’s noes. As if all his troubles would be resolved with the marriage. I don’t deny that partially the reasoning holds, indeed it's when the woman fully accepts him that we see the new rise, it’s just too forced... it would be even for an incurable romantic.

(Or maybe not... perhaps now, people are too used to thinking that nothing is necessary and everything is replaceable? So a person is not.)

Instead, the choice to cover Cash’s songs is appreciable. Putting them in another’s mouth would have been less convincing than one might expect.

I give it a 3 1/2 out of 5.