Leaving his Arkansas cotton farm home behind, Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) signs up with Sun Records in Memphis to kick start his music career. He tours with a roster that includes the likes of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, emerging as one of country music’s greatest talents. Even when bands and singers around him move from acoustic to electric, Cash keeps the hits coming, and with his wife Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin) and two lovely children waiting back in his comfortable Memphis home, the singer looks to have reached it all. But two things might make him throw everything away: fellow singer June Carter (Reese Witherspoon) and drugs.

Walk The Line is writer/director James Mangold’s (Cop Land, Girl, Interrupted) interpretation of the autobiography of the legendary country singer, who passed in September 2003 at the age of 71, following his wife June who died four months earlier. Mangold’s film leaves out most of the contradictory aspects of Cash’s life (he was a somewhat pious christian and a frequent sinner, he was with the Air Force at young age and became a symbol of counterculture [the infamous middle finger picture springs to mind]), focusing instead on the ups and downs of fame and the suspended love story with June Carter. The film starts with the death of ten year old J.R.’s (no one called him John or Johnny until post-Air Force service) brother in a chainsaw accident back at the cotton farm, and ends with his marriage proposal to June Carter on stage some twenty-plus year later.

The first scenes establish J.R.’s love for music, showing the young boy sticking his head in front of the radio whenever time permits. It is here where he gets acquainted with June’s voice, the youngest child in the musically gifted Carter family. Its this information that serves as the exposition of June’s character; when Johnny finally meets her on tour years later, she has matured into a sassy and comedic stage entertainer as much as a musician, a trait she developed to set herself apart from her famous siblings. The first half of the film’s dynamic is driven by Johnny’s unrequited courting of her, while June unsuccessfully tears through marriage after marriage. And all the while Johnny and his wife grow more and more distant; where at first she pushed him to make something of his life and start recording, she now is wary of her husband’s success and life away from home on tour.

In biopics it is always difficult for the leading actor(s) to portray a person who is already so etched into and defined in many people’s minds. This circumstance isn’t made any easier by the decision that Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon were to interpret the songs of Johnny Cash and June Carter themselves, but Walk The Line reveals the acting duo rising up to the occasion, pulling off the playing and the singing very convincingly. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how the casting of the two lead roles could have been any better. Phoenix is so spot on with Cash’s mannerisms (look at the lips, or the way he ‘carries’ his head on his neck), and shows the depths of his talent especially in the singer’s more troublesome moments. You can literally see Cash’s abyss reflected in Phoenix’s eyes. Reese Witherspoon is simply adorable on stage, perfectly driving home June Carter’s sassyness on stage. Her role is far more gratifying than her previous comedic performances such as in Legally Blonde, unlocking nuances and subtleties previously unknown to moviegoung audiences. Her June is the perfect counterpoint to Phoenix’s Cash, and there’s no denying the pairs incredible on screen chemistry.

It’s in the film’s second half where everything really clicks, as the audience follows Cash’s fall in his drug addiction. The film genially emphasizes how Cash, even in his fame and glory, still suffers from his brother’s death and the fact that in his father’s eyes, it should have been him who died, and not the role model older son. His guilt, coupled with excessive alcohol and drug abuse, tears his life apart up to the point where (and the film really leaves no other possible solution) no one else but June can save him, or even reach out to him. It may sound corny, but the way in which June and Johnny are setup as soulmates is executed with much care and - more importantly - love that the movie is at no point cheesy. The pair are their respective saviours, and their touching story is brought across all the more powerful thanks to the film’s formal and technical strength.

Walk The Line is a beautiful and unphoney film about an honest love story that works so well because of the care and dedication put into this project by James Mangold and his crew (costumes, set design and editing are near perfect). The soundtrack is great to listen to, and even though the film features a lot of stage performances, the story never drags, because there is always something going on in the singing. The best example is ‘Ring of Fire’, Cash’s probably most famous song, co-written by June Carter to express Johnny’s drug addiction and her forbidden love for him; it’s nuances like this that keep the plot going forward. And even detached from the the historical personas Johnny Cash and June Carter, Walk The Line works perfectly as a film and a story in itself, with an entirely coherent structure and well rounded-off character arcs.

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