Walk the Line
"Walk the Line" becomes more than a standard Hollywood biopic the instant Joaquin Phoenix's Johnny Cash loses his breath watching June Carter wow a packed auditorium.
Who can blame him? Reese Witherspoon plays Carter, and it's a pretty amazing movie-star moment.
The crowd that's come to see Carter is familiar with her chirpy twang and crack comic timing, just as we're familiar with Witherspoon's chirpy twang and crack comic timing. It's Cash who's never seen this woman sing before, and as Phoenix begins his slow, smitten descent, so, too, do we. It's like falling in love with Witherspoon again for the first time.
"Walk the Line" retells the first half of Cash's life according to the biopic arc. The film starts with his unhappy childhood on an Arkansas farm with a mean dad, traces his noncombat military stint in the Air Force, his rise to country music fame, and his addiction to amphetamines.
But James Mangold's film is more shrewdly conceived than that. For one thing, he has the cast sing in their own voices, which gives the movie invaluable authenticity. The screenplay has the ups and downs of a country ballad. Carter rescued Cash from his demons, a fact Cash, who died two years ago, happily admitted. But, as a classic love story requires, there were obstacles, most of which were put up by Carter.
A popular singer and songwriter, she was a true professional who didn't want Cash's nonstop yearning getting in the way of their singing and touring together. After all, he was married, and she was a divorced parent and an American sweetheart, mindful of the moral rigors of the 1950s era. Her good-girl demeanor complemented and conflicted with Cash's hard living and anti-authoritarianism.
Mangold adapted "Walk the Line" from Cash's autobiography, and he retains many of Cash's personal lows (the childhood death of his brother and that disapproving father, played by Robert Patrick) and career highs (too many to count), bookending the film with the classic 1968 Folsom Prison concert.
After returning from the service, Cash marries Vivian Liberto (Ginnifer Goodwin), whom he'd known for only a month, and settles down in Memphis, where he proves a bust as a door-to-door salesman. Fatefully, he wanders into Sam Phillips's Sun Records studio, where someone named Elvis Presley is swiveling.
This all happens rather fast. Soon Cash and what was then called the Tennessee Two have a hit single, and, at a live gig, he meets Carter, whom he'd read about in magazines and listened to on the radio. Before she hits the stage, Carter, in a hoop skirt and a cardigan pink as grapefruit meat, finds herself caught in Cash's guitar strap, and their introduction is something out of one of those old Hollywood backstage musicals, where the lovers spend the picture being cute for audiences but drive each other bananas when the footlights are off. Cash was more than in love with Carter. He was desperate for her. The Man in Black was nothing without the woman in canary and carnation and lime.
Mangold, who co-wrote the movie with Gill Dennis, has devised a brilliant way of refashioning the lore of Cash's life. Not only does it focus the story, it elevates the emotional stakes for the actors. Cash spends most of the film trying to seduce this woman into surrender, first sexually, then romantically, then conjugally. So both actors are acting toward a goal: union. Even if you know that when Carter died in May 2003 (four months before Cash) she'd long since taken Cash's name, "Walk the Line" creates considerable tension about whether Cash's woo will stick.
The performances transcend mere impersonation, in part because the physical demands to play Cash and especially Carter aren't as strenuous as those to play, say, Mahatma Gandhi, Ray Charles, or Truman Capote, although Cash's convulsive, grave-digging guitar-playing style is sui generis. Neither actor is a ringer for either part. But the spirit guiding them is true, and the lack of obvious resemblance is freeing.
Witherspoon's Carter comes on like a creation from the funny pages, but the girlishness is an act. As the movie goes on her character deepens. Witherspoon, who's almost 30, can seem hopelessly jubilant in movies. And some might find her less convincing as Carter, who was quite womanly; you can't entirely hear in Witherspoon's singing the sad experience that Carter brought to her songs. Still, the image of the actress alone on a stage, strumming an autoharp and singing "Wildwood Flower" is one that belongs in a locket.
Phoenix's Cash is psychologically urgent: He needs this woman to save his life. As a performer, Phoenix often has a scary intensity. He seems ferociously committed, even to goofball parts such as his role as Mel Gibson's brother in "Signs." As Cash, Phoenix is operating at full tilt. The moment he drops his voice in "Folsom Prison Blues" to bellow the words "San Antone" during his audition for Phillips is chilling and transformative: You buy the performance and never look back. Phoenix seems to be scraping his soul to play this man and sing these songs.
The film sends you home moved and in a tuneful mood. The highest compliment you can pay a movie like "Walk the Line" is one you'd pay to any great romance. Watching these two work their way toward marriage feels like a two-hour honeymoon.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.
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