Posted on 11/21/2005 3:52:24 PM PST by rhema
I was 19 when I fully understood that historians often can’t grasp the complexities of the characters they purport to speak of. It's something I learned once in a history class, when a professor suggested that George Washington was less than devout and merely used civil religion to unify the nation. When I raised my hand to question this, I was told to bring in evidence to the contrary--which I did the next day, reading aloud from Washington's diary, in which he expressed his deep religious faith in the manner less of a president and more of an 18th-century revival preacher.
"Who should I believe, your textbook or his diary?" I asked the professor.
"Walk The Line " the Johnny Cash biopic, features some truly inspired acting--and singing--by Joaquin Phoenix (playing Cash), and Reese Witherspoon (playing his wife, June), and some great music under the direction of T-Bone Burnett. That's the good news. The bad news is that it tries hard to do what no one was able to do in life and what my history professor tried to do to our first president: separate Johnny Cash from his God. There were four great loves in J.R. Cash's life: music, God, June Carter, and drugs. But "Walk The Line" pretends there were only three. It is Johnny Cash for the secular set.
The Almighty, omnipresent in Cash's life amidst his struggles to fight addiction, is barely worthy of a mention in "Walk The Line." Imagine watching a movie about Kurt Cobain and hearing the name Courtney Love mentioned once or twice as an aside, or for that matter watching Bud Abbott's life story and never being introduced to Lou Costello. Such is the silliness of trying to tell the Johnny Cash story and leaving out either of his real-life co-stars, God or June Carter.
To his credit, Rick Rubin, the rock producer who took an interest in Cash and produced several brilliant records in Cash's twilight years--known as the American Recordings--understood this and never attempted to keep God out of the records he produced for Cash. It was Rubin who helped bring Cash's heretofore secular and sacred worlds together, allowing street-smart songs like "I've Been Everywhere" and "Rusty Cage" to co-exist on the same records with worshipful songs like "Redemption" and "Spiritual." But Rick Rubin didn't produce this film, and it shows.
Fortunately for those who have from experience learned to be suspicious of historians (or filmmakers), Cash, not unlike George Washington, left behind his own words to set the record straight.
"Walk The Line" is a love story, with June Carter Cash seeming to get all the credit for helping her man overcome his addictions. The message is a simple one: We are all just the right woman or the right man away from salvation. It's reminiscent of that singularly noxious line from the film "Titanic": "He saved me in every way a person can be saved."
The message is driven home by the film's relentless obsession with showing us over and over again how mismatched Cash was with his first wife Vivian and how deficient she was because of her inability to realize her husband's genius. Enter June Carter, whose determined love turned her man around. But in "Cash-The Autobiography," published shortly before his death, Cash made it clear that while June was a help, it was God who ultimately helped him overcome his addictions.
The key moment in Cash's turnaround happened when he tried a unique method of suicide--crawling through a cave hoping to never make it out alive. Cash wrote:
The absolute lack of light was appropriate, for at that moment I was as far from God as I have ever been. My separation from Him, the deepest and most ravaging of the various kinds of loneliness I'd felt over the years seemed finally complete. It wasn't. I thought I'd left him but He hadn't left me. I felt something very powerful start to happen to me, a sensation of utter peace, clarity and sobriety. I didn't believe it at first. I couldn't understand it.... the feeling persisted though and then my mind started focusing on God.... there in Nickajack cave I became conscious of my destiny. I was not in charge of my own death. I was going to die at God's time, not mine. I hadn't prayed over my decision to seek death in the cave, but that hadn't stopped God from intervening…I told my mother that God had saved me from killing myself. I told her I was ready to commit myself to Him and do whatever it took to get off drugs. I wasn't lying.
In the wake of the box office success of "The Passion Of The Christ," 20th Century Fox and other studios are seeking to capitalize on the phenomenon by creating faith-friendly products, finally coming to the obvious conclusion that eluded them for so long: Millions of Americans want to experience media that affirms their faith instead of mocking or marginalizing it. What they don't yet seem to realize is that instead of creating an endless stream of third-rate productions about the end of the world and releasing them in a handful of markets or in churches, the best way to meet the demands of the red states is simply to faithfully retell great stories that have a strong faith component while simultaneously ensuring that they remain of interest to those who may not consider themselves religious or even spiritual. Any audience will put up with a certain amount of religion, so long as it is part of the natural fabric of a good story.
"Walk The Line" is a faith-lite version of a faith-filled story, and if traditionalists are smart they will punish it for its unfaithfulness not with loud protests, but by giving it the treatment they so brilliantly dished out to another picture, "Saved," a film that depicted a Christian high school in a stereotypically negative fashion. That film's backers were practically begging for a boycott, which they correctly understood as the only thing likely to save their film from the trash heap of obscurity it so richly deserved to be tossed into. Instead what it got from the leadership of the faith community was the worst punishment of all: It was ignored.
"Walk The Line" is a gorgeous movie, smartly told with some outstanding acting that will likely garner Reese Witherspoon an Academy Award nomination. It'd be a great movie if it weren't so manifestly incomplete. It releases in theaters on November 18th, a great day to stay outdoors and honor Cash's true memory by instead picking up a copy of "Cash-The Autobiography" or Steve Turner's "The Man Called Cash" and one of his American Recordings CDs, lovingly produced by an unlikely hero named Rick Rubin. He's a man who may not have shared Cash's faith, but well understood that Johnny Cash could never be understood in the absence of the God who gave him the strength to rebuild his shattered life as best he could, provided an angel named June to give him a second start, and empowered him to continue making unforgettable music that gave hope to many.
A man in his prime contrasted with the end of life.
Devastatingly beautiful and terrible.
What spooked me was June looking down at him from the stairs.
Her expression seemed to say she *knew*.
I'm glad they're together again.
If I could start again
a million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way
yes, Johnny's cover of "hurt" is eerie. It is eerie in a deep soul touching way. He really truly seems to embody that song with every fiber of his being.
Well, it sure humbled Trent Reznor.
I think he realized he hadn't really written that song for himself after seeing that version.
mmmmm, that's deep! gives me goosebumps!!!
Yup.
Trent's is nihilistic with little sense of the repentance or regret one might feel to a much greater degree when nearing the end of one's life.
In this case, Trent wrote it but Johnny lived it.
Reznor's a dark, demented genius but this song just wasn't his to keep.
It had a life of its own.
Can you tell me the best way to view this video? I would really like to see it.
Click this link
http://www.losthighwayrecords.com/e/cash11403.html
and choose WM hi or WM lo, depending on your connection speed.
You'll have to choose WM Hi.
The WM Lo link is dead.
Thank you so much for the info!
No problem....:)
Thanks for posting this. I checked it out- and it was AWESOME. My husband and I both agreed it was better than the original (and we both love early Nine Inch Nails.)
They had 2 specials on Cash the other night and when they got to the "Hurt" video, the narrator said something to the effect of "most people have now completely forgotten that NIN ever did the song"....;))
[Trent will be fine. He's still got the magnificent visual feast of "The Perfect Drug" to comfort him]
The 2 contrasting approaches to the "meaning" of song are fascinating.
NIN went for a generalized shotgun effect with endless imagery of random, scattered global death and destruction.
It appeared somewhat "political" and judgemental in its intent.
Cash went for an intensely personal, laser-beam focused single shot between the eyes.
Wholesale impersonal death vs. personal, impending death.
[now if we could only get Billy Idol or Type O Negative to cover "Sanctified"]....LOL!
I just saw the movie, and it absolutely blew me away.
I love country music, and grew up with Johnny Cash playing in the background. My parents' generation thought he was all it -- men especially liked his music and his style. He was already an icon in the 70s, but many of us youngin's didn't really see the appeal -- why was he so big? As I got older, and started listening to guys like Cash, George Jones, etc... with adult ears, I got it.
Yet, even though I went into the movie thinking I "got it", I was totally unprepared for what this movie would do. Phoenix absolutely captured that quiet half-swagger and the way that Cash was (on-stage, if not always in real-life) a man's man -- gritty, intense, edgy. No soft crooning going on here.
I realized after watching the movie that I had listened to Cash on AM radio, watched him on TV's with a 3 inch speaker, and even the records of the day didn't begin to approach what it was like to hear live performances.
This movie captured what it must have been like to be there when Cash was in his prime, hitting the stage like something no-one had ever seen before.
As to the religious bit, that is nitpicking. This was a great movie.
You are right about the fact that at the time of the Folsom Prison concert, Cash was not as deeply and openly religious as he was in later years when he was singing at Billy Graham crusades and what-not.
The other thing that should be remembered is that even as a "born-again Christian", Cash was edgy and never felt quite "safe" to those who wanted to pigeon-hole him in their image of what they thought a Christian should be. He didn't fit anyone's mold.
In particular, Cash never lost his sense of the importance of being real, and the importance of understanding and having on compassion on people right where they are in life. Cash certainly regretted the drugs and alcohol that he did and regretted the way he hurt those around him. But I never got the sense that he regretted having made any of the music that he did, since at root he was telling people's stories -- many of which are all too often sad, sordid, tragic, and R-rated.
There is a scene in "Walk the Line" that perfectly captures this sense of caring about people where they are, not where they should be. In it, Cash is discussing his proposed Folsom Prison concert with his record producers. I won't ruin it for you, but it was vintage Johnny Cash.
In the 90s, Cash was playing at acid rock festivals. I remember talking to a couple of teenagers who were going to travel to a big festival. There they were in their black leather and piercings. I asked them who was playing the concert, and one of the names they mentioned was Johnny Cash. Having last run across a Cash performance flipping past a Billy Graham crusade on TV, I did a double-take, assuming I had heard wrong. They told me, "yeah, he's gonna be there... he's the coolest."
When I asked them what they found cool about him, they replied. "He's the original man in black, man... the original man in black. Doesn't get any cooler than that."
And then there was the video everyone is discussing on this thread: "Hurt." Try to fit that one into someone's nice neat pigeon hole.
You will love the movie. When I first heard about the movie, I said, "Yeah, right." Then expectations started to build, and I was prepared to be disappointed. I wasn't.
Great movie about a great man. Johnny struggled with temptation, although temptation usually won in his younger years.
Is it the same "Personal Jesus" as recorded by Depeche Mode?
yea.
To anyone who has reservations about this movie...dont. The movie is an amazing protrayal of Cash. Phoenix did an absolutely astonishing rendition of Cash and his voice is about as close as you can get (they didn their own singing).
Witherspoon doesnt portray June Carter all that well (Reese is just to damn cutsie or something) but her singing abilities are very good. I actually look forward to the "Walk the Line" soundtrack that feature Phoenix and Witherspoon.
Yep. It's a cover of Depeche Mode's song.
Just my opinion, Cash actually makes invests the song with strong feelings.
You can hear a short clip over at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00006L7XQ/002-8274693-3352835?v=glance&n=5174
Thanks. (I thought Reese was outstanding.)
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