I was so fired up after seeing Walk The Line
that I bought the soundtrack. Walk the Line is really an interesting movie.
Most think that Reese Witherspoon,who played June Carter Cash, will get the Oscar for best actress. She was good but not quite as good, I think, as Felicity Huffman was in TransAmerica.
Joaquin Phoenix, who played Johnny Cash, I thought, was better than Reese. I've always liked him, for one thing, he's no pretty boy. Obviously, he was born with a cleft lip which was fixed, but noticeable.
This movie basically follows what we already know: Johnny started getting famous, got on drugs, got divorced, and finally "found himself again" with June Carter, a no-nonsense woman, who rescued him.
A story thread like this always fascinates me. Those like Johnny will do anything to hit the bigtime; and, then, when they arrive, they blame "what they have to do to get to the bigtime" for their troubles. For instance, he blamed touring for his drug addiction. An actor complains about the paparazzi. Well, if they didn't want to pay the price for fame; i.e., the schedules, the celebrity worship of non-thinking America, and the paparazzi, they should have kept their day job.
My favorite part of the movie was Johnny's Air Force stint. According to the movie, it was in the Air Force where he began to develop his song writing talent and his self-worth. He made Sergeant, which is no small thing in the Air Force. He wrote this moving song out of that experience: "I am a long way from home. I'm so homesick like I thought I'd never be. Everything is wrong. Someone please watch over me... I wish I'd stayed at home like I was told. I'm a long way from home and so all alone, homesick like I'd never be."
The military helped him escape abject poverty and a father who was unsophisticated and even less attuned to the emotional needs of his son. A tragic accident felled his older brother whom he adored and the movie intimated he never got over it.
I thought the movie pretty much trashed Johnny's first wife, Vivian; and according, to Johnny's daughter from his first marriage, Kathy, her mother was not the unsupportive nag that the movie portrayed.
In a two hour movie, there have to be holes, I think; and, if there have to be, emphasize the music, which they did.
The music is great. My favorite song is, "I Walk the Line" or maybe the one on Folsom Prison. I can't decide.
If you are not ADD, see Walk The Line on DVD.
Two parachutes.
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