Posted on 11/25/2005 12:44:43 PM PST by SirLinksalot
Walk the Line Ignores Cash's Christianity
by Jack Langer Posted Nov 21, 2005
Just as I began contemplating walking out of the new Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line—it was when Cash is in the throes of a drug addiction withdrawal scene ripped off from the movie Ray—I turned my head and saw the middle-aged woman next to me dabbing her tears with a handkerchief. I found the display deeply surprising and somehow unsettling; I’ve been more emotionally affected by Kenny’s death in most episodes of South Park than I was by any scene in this movie.
But my weepy neighbor was not alone in her judgment, as Walk the Line puzzlingly has garnered rave reviews and instantaneous Oscar hype. Film critic extraordinaire Roger Ebert gave the movie three-and-a-half stars. Granted, the luster of that particular review is somewhat diminished by Ebert’s dubious track record—he gave a generous two-and-a-half stars to Gigli, the Ben Affleck comedy/romance that is now usually found in the horror/disaster section of the video store.
Ebert’s praise for Walk the Line, however, echoes the majority of critics who especially have lauded Joaquin Phoenix’s enfeebled starring performance as Johnny Cash. The accolades are sorely misplaced. Every time Phoenix appears on the screen, I couldn’t help thinking: “That’s not Johnny Cash, that’s an actor who is River Phoenix’s brother.” Joaquin plays a rather pathetic, drug-addled creature that lacks any hint of Johnny Cash’s warmth, humor, charm, or mystery, even in the few scenes when the character is sober. The story mostly revolves around his relationship with June (capably played by Reese Witherspoon), but the romance founders because it’s impossible to believe a strong-willed, self-respecting woman like June could find anything attractive about this dreary nullity who has apparently time-traveled 2,000 years since we last saw him in Gladiator. When Joaquin/Cash’s domineering father, who is supposed to be a villainous character, calls him a pill-popping loser in front of June and her family, I couldn’t help but admire the old man’s honesty.
The movie’s core problem is the utter unoriginality of the story. Despite the presence of numerous Johnny Cash songs, there’s no exploration of what made Cash’s music unique and daring. The film is just a stereotypical tale of a celebrity who, having risen from humble beginnings to achieve sudden fame, overindulges in booze, drugs, and womanizing, hits bottom, and finally sobers up and revives his career. It’s the plot of every “E! True Hollywood Story” and “VH-1 Behind the Music” ever made. The film isn’t even a story so much as a series of clichés. All that’s missing is a black guy who dies early and a mobster who sees a psychiatrist.
In order to establish the tired Hollywood trope that Christians are strange and intolerant people, the movie inserts several incongruous scenes that serve no purpose other than to ridicule Christianity: when Cash’s brother dies young, his unhinged father yells out, “The devil took him! The devil took the wrong son!” Jerry Lee Lewis inexplicably launches into a fire and brimstone tirade declaiming that he, Cash, and all their listeners are going to hell for the songs they sing; and a typical illiberal Christian woman approaches June in a store and, for absolutely no reason, tells her that June’s divorce was an “abomination.” Thus it comes as no surprise when the story of Cash’s real-life conversion into an evangelical Christian is reduced to an insignificant ten-second scene in which he and June walk from a parking lot toward a church.
Due to the filmmakers’ discomfort with Christianity, the film ignores the entire aspect of Cash’s career that was occupied by gospel music. For example, the record producer at his first audition reacts to Cash’s performance of a gospel song by telling Cash that gospel doesn’t sell and that Cash obviously doesn’t believe in all that “I’ve been saved” nonsense anyway. He tells Cash to play something that really means something to him, so Cash plays a secular country tune and gets the contract. The film implies that this marks Cash’s abandonment of gospel, as henceforth it makes no other reference to Cash’s gospel music, except when the warden at Folsom prison self-servingly asks Cash to play gospel instead of his edgy prison-themed songs in order to keep from stirring up the inmates (Cash, of course, refuses). Cash’s real-life decision to leave his original record label partly because it prohibited him from recording gospel albums (of which he would record many throughout his career) is omitted from the film.
Having insulted the religion to which Johnny Cash dedicated much of his life, the movie jarringly ends in 1968, as if the end of Cash’s drug abuse and womanizing left nothing interesting to tell of the following 35 years of his life. It never explores the fascinating duality of Johnny Cash that was reflected so strongly in his music—the outlaw Man in Black who was deeply enmeshed in Christian spirituality. Instead, we are treated to a story whose starring character is essentially Robert Downey Jr. in a black shirt. I suppose there’s a reason why Walk the Line could bring a person to tears, but it lies more in the film’s hilariously trite stereotypes and comically formulaic storytelling than in its critically-acclaimed quality.
He also was narrator/singer of a Gospel Film about the life of Christ entitled -- THE GOSPEL ROAD.
The film left out an important segment of Johnny Cash's life.
Many, many people have turned from their wicked ways after finding salvation in Jesus Christ. This is a message that Hollywood does not want to get out.
Yeah, it did.
But I still enjoyed the movie.
What one must really watch out for if they go to that movie are the previews. You might be subjected to the gay cowboy movie preview. I refused to watch, but then I knew immediately what it was. Others I'm sure did not.
"Johnny Cash actually participated in several Billy Graham Crusades.
He also was narrator/singer of a Gospel Film about the life of Christ entitled -- THE GOSPEL ROAD.
The film left out an important segment of Johnny Cash's life."
I thought the movie covered the period up to the Folsom Prison concert - before Cash's public Christianity and well before his duet with Reverend Graham (Called the Preacher Said).
Hollywood wouldn't deem them wicked in the first place.
With more respect to Hollywood than it deserves, it is impossible to portray the importance of Salvation without having personally experienced it.
Specifically, you saw John and June going to church there near the end. Granted that isn't the story, but I guess that's all of it they cared to tell.
There is a DVD out of some vintage Town Hall Party performances from Johnny Cash (I believe when he was still on Sun Records) from 1958. It was released by Bear Family and although it is a German import, it is in NTSC and can be found at some major retailers (like Fry's).
Among the songs he sings is "It Was Jesus".
It is jarring because of the lack of direct references to God and Jesus in the mainstream media of today.
And much of the music sung by The Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis' impromptu session with Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash at Sun Studios after he had left for RCA) is religious themed.
Makes you wonder what the movie about GW will be like...
I'm so sick of browbeaters who trash movies because it "isn't Christian enough." Fine. Start your own production company and direct it yourself. What do you expect from Hollywood?
I enjoyed the movie very much.
..it was conceived 10 years ago, when they were alive.
Yes I enjoyed it also. I just was mad about the previews.
Hollyweird doesn't care what happened after Johnny came to the lord and it doesn't server their puroses to tell that story.
"Revived his career". His career had a number of ups and downs and they weren't all related to drugs and drinking.
The industry shut him out and called him old. In the 1990s he made a stab at the "alternative" market without changing his sound, just reviving part of his image; The Man In Black. He was still largely ignored. Producer Rick Rubin used the 1973 image of Cash shooting-the-bird to "thank" the music industry.
THAT would have been a more compelling movie. About how an aged old man who had lived a full life still had energy and faith in him and despite some backer support saw the door shut in his face. "But life isn't like that, the underdog wins and talented people sell albums."
Blow apart the smoke and mirrors of the entertainment industry. These are the same people who loved seeing songs like "How much is that doggie in the window" dominate the hit parade and sold us Tab Hunter and Fabian as "rock and roll".
Don't let this article stop you from seeing a great movie.
I didn't see the movie, and probably won't. Did it touch on all at his time in the U S Air Force Security Service?
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