The worst sin a biography can commit is failing to live up to its subject's particular genius. "Walk the Line," director James Mangold's by-the-numbers account of Johnny Cash's rise, fall and redemption commits such a sin in abundance. Safe, middling, and formulaic, it's everything Cash's music is not.
Not that "Walk the Line" needs to be particularly great in and of itself in order to succeed - giving Cash and his music a little breathing room would suffice in this respect. Instead, Mangold's film buries the Man in Black in biopic banalities.
We first see Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) on the cusp of his infamous concert at Folsom Prison. Or rather, even before a proper introduction, we hear what might as well be Cash's theme song: the sound of prisoners rattling their chains in violent applause.
It's no surprise that "Walk the Line" chooses to place the Folsom concert at the beginning of Cash's story. Not only does the concert seem to be the defining moment in Cash's career, it also manages to cut to the heart of his appeal. This was, after all, a man whose music brought together the straight-laced gospel music devotees, the sweater-girl groupies and the locked-away maniacs.
But "Walk the Line" pulls away from the sound of those clattering chains the first chance it gets, leaving the bars and barbwire of Folsom for the pastoral poverty of Cash's youth on a cotton farm in Arkansas. There Cash meets with an early tragedy when his saintly older brother dies in a gruesome power saw accident.
The film takes the death as an opportunity to do a little psychological groundwork on Cash: he couldn't live up to his brother's potential, his father hated him, etc. Luckily, none of this Man on the Couch stuff gets too heavy-handed before Cash moves to Tennessee and falls in with Sun Records producer Sam Philips and, consequently, a recording contract.
By about 30 minutes into the film Cash is gobbling down speed with Elvis and blowing apart a tree with a home-made firework.
You probably know the rest of the story, even though your copy of Cash's autobiography isn't dog-eared. The Man in Black hits the road, hits the hard drugs, alienates friends and loved ones, saves himself with a little help from wife-to-be June Carter (Reese Witherspoon), and comes out on top with the Folsom concert. That a concert at a prison proves to be Cash's moment of redemption seems to be an irony lost on the film.
What really gets lost in the biopic meat grinder is the only reason anyone cares about Cash, the reason convict and church-goer alike roared at his songs about executions, cocaine-fuelled killing sprees, and unrequited love. Whatever you want to call it - genius, charisma, base depravity - "Walk the Line" tip-toes around it.
And while it's never clear whether or not "Walk the Line" wants to keep Cash and his genius mysterious, or simply can't figure him out for itself, most of the narrative does seem to be spent posing questions that, if we could only answer them, might get us closer to the source of Cash's genius. So, why was Cash a genius? Was it because he hated his father? Wanted to impress his dead brother? Felt imprisoned in the military, and later in the suburbs? Loved June Carter? Was told by Sam Perkins that he should believe in himself? Was addicted to metamphetimines?
In the end, the best scenes in "Walk the Line" eschew amateur psychologizing and Behind the Music-like narrative. The film's greatest moment, for example, takes place during Cash's stint in the military at an air force base in Germany. There Cash hunkers down in the deserted bunkers and offices and picks out "Folsom Prison Blues" on his guitar in a wavering, dreamy voice. For all its subtlety, the slight pause between "Well, I shot a man in Reno" and the next line - "Just to watch him die" - is like witnessing an on-screen revelation.
No doubt Cash was an interesting man, but it was his curse to live a life eminently adaptable to a run of the mill rock-star biopic. With Hollywood's vampiric hunger for stories with authenticity and tales of overcoming the odds, "Walk the Line" will no doubt win an Oscar. But if there's any justice in this world, Johnny Cash will be remembered more for the clatter of those chains than anything else in this film.
