A great many songs and recordings followed, of course, of a richness and variety that very few US artists have equaled. Cash's bottomless voice and the steady, churning rhythms stayed constant, but the sheer range of material is staggering: murder ballads, love songs, novelty numbers, pop covers, gospel standards, all sung with mean wit and heartbreaking sincerity.
There is no way a feature-length movie could do justice to such bounty, and Walk the Line settles for the minimum. The religious conviction and social conscience that informed some of Cash's most enduring songs are all but erased, as the picture dwells mainly on the most accessible, least provocative aspects of his musical legacy -- the early, rockabilly-tinged Sun sides, the early-1960's hits and, of course, the duets with June Carter, played by Reese Witherspoon.
Cash and Carter's long infatuation, tumultuous partnership and eventual marriage provide the film with an emotional core. Johnny's first wife, Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin), aspires above all to middle-class normalcy and material comfort, and while the filmmakers try to show her some sympathy, she doesn't stand much of a chance next to June. Witherspoon's lively, smart performance suggests a mixture of warmth and brisk professionalism, qualities the actress and the singer clearly share. But most of June's own drama -- the collapse of her two marriages before she finally said yes to Johnny, the pressures of growing up in a show-business family -- takes place off screen, which makes the character feel a bit incomplete.
Then again, so does Johnny himself, in spite of Phoenix's sweating, quivery intensity. The premise of his performance seems to be that Cash, a shy, diffident, almost inarticulate fellow in daily life, found his rage, humor and charisma onstage, and Phoenix does a good job of conveying this transformation. Even though his singing voice doesn't match the original -- how could it? -- he is most convincing in concert, when his shoulders tighten and he cocks his head to one side. Otherwise, he seems stuck in the kind of off-the-rack psychological straitjacket in which Hollywood likes to confine troubled geniuses.
Johnny's father, Ray (Robert Patrick), is cold and critical, compounding the feelings of guilt and inadequacy that arose from the death of Johnny's older brother, Jack (Lucas Till), in a sawmill accident. But as is often true in narratives like this, the childhood hardships and psychological scars explain both too much and too little. Emoting plus music does not add up to art, and Phoenix's Johnny Cash, after more than two hours, remains stranded in the no man's land between cliche and enigma.
The decision to make new versions of Cash's songs rather than have the actors lip-sync over existing recordings (as Foxx did in Ray) was a risky one. The results are respectable, if rarely transporting. There are only two moments likely to raise goose bumps: Witherspoon singing the Carter Family staple Wildwood Flower, accompanying herself on autoharp, and Phoenix lurching into an out-of-control rendition of I Got Stripes that ends in drug-fueled collapse. Otherwise, you have to wait until the final credits to be reminded of what Johnny Cash and June Carter really sounded like. Their disembodied voices carry more presence, more humor and hurt, than anything in the movie itself, which honors them without quite capturing who they were.
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