Movie: Walk the Line

Michele and I escaped to the Bear Tooth last night to eat fantastic food and catch this movie before it leaves town. (This theatre experience makes you feel smug and smart for being so far behind on moviegoing...)

We were just entranced. I know that Reese is the one who took home the big statue for her performance, but Joaquin Phoenix didn't portray Johnny Cash - he was Johnny Cash. I love it when someone nails that kind of portrayal without it being mimicry. It wasn't a robotic impersonation - it was a translation of the essence of a man. I would love to see him play this role again in 30 years. For me the most evocative parts were the way he captured the soft, loving, yearning soul with such tenderness. Johnny Cash always impressed me as sort of a tough bastard constantly on the verge of tears. That's what I saw last night.

The music was wonderful, as well as the almost throwaway presence of so many famous people who were just 'part of the tour.' Thing is, Phoenix and Witherspoon are actually better vocalists. John and June were peerless in their delivery of a song but they weren't singers. So a few times I wanted Reese especially to have a little more of June's edge in her voice - she was just a little too sweet - though Joaquin had a fascinating handle on Johnny's ability to stay just a hair's breadth off of a pure tone. Reese doesn't have quite June's substance of physical presence but the open smile and the few moments of anger she displayed caught her beautifully. I grinned the first time I saw Joaquin walk - I don't think I ever thought of Johnny Cash having a distinctive walk (at least not like, say, John Wayne) but when I saw it last night I thought oh my god, he does and how did he nail that? Robert Patrick's performance as the impenetrable father made me just want to kill him through the whole movie - what a compelling, maddening portrait.

The story was engrossing and I could have watched it all over again then and there. Very jumpy in places for timeline - jarring, actually - I wanted to say hey wait, back up there and finish that. But it was easy to be drawn back into the next chapter. I wouldn't have wanted to have cut any of the pivotal moments in this incredible first-half-of-a-life in an incredible life. It was especially interesting to see the prison concert, having only just watched the actual concert on TV recently.

As I write this, I'm listening to the American IV: The Man Comes Around album, which has been on my constant-play rotation for 18 months. I am brought to tears in places, every time I listen to it. What voice he once had is beyond recapturing in this album, and the result is pure heart - what he always delivered, whether in his robust prime or in the thin decline of age. He put himself out there and from all walks of experience we were drawn by his joy and anguish and self-revulsion and redemption. Whatever the state of his life, he sang it without apology and he laid it bare always. There wasn't any not-knowing this man. It's the authenticity that made him, and what makes this movie. In Ray we learn a lot about the man's life. In Walk the Line, we go inside the man's soul.