Walk the Line

This is from the archive: we screened Walk the Line way back in 2007.

WALK THE LINE

USA 2005, 136 minutes

Director:          James Mangold

Starring:          Joaquim Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon

Awards and Nominations include: 

Oscars

Win                 Reese Witherspoon (Best Actress in a Leading Role)

Nominations    Joaquim Phoenix (Best Actor in a Leading Role)     

                      

Golden Globes

Win                 Reese Witherspoon (Best Actress in a Leading Role – Musical or Comedy)

Win                 Joaquim Phoenix (Best Actor in a Leading Role – Musical or Comedy)

BAFTA

Win                 Reese Witherspoon (Best Performance by Actress in a Leading Role)

Nominations    Joaquim Phoenix (Best Performance by Actor in a Leading Role)   

Total of 28 wins and 24 nominations

Walk the Line follows the life of American country music legend Johnny Cash from his dirt-poor childhood in rural Arkansas up to the high spot of his career in 1968 when he performed a live gig at Folsom Prison California.  The film begins with the preparations for the Folsom Prison gig and the story then unfolds in an extended flashback as Cash fingers a circular saw in the prison workshop: Cash was traumatised by the tragic death of his elder brother as a result of an accident with a circular saw and was made to feel guilty over it by a bitter father who denied him affection, respect and encouragement.

 

The main theme of the story is Cash’s gradual discovery of his talent as an artist, from buying his first guitar whilst in the US air force until he finally takes up a musical career after switching from gospel singing to county music.  However there is also a powerful secondary theme about Cash’s lack of self-esteem and his need to prove himself in order to impress his unyielding father, and it is this that leads to degradation and despair resulting from his drinking, drug-taking and womanising.  Finally Cash is saved by the love of a good woman, June Carter, whose whole life had been spent in the country music business.  Cash and Carter were married in 1968 and remained together for the rest of their lives: they both died in 2003.

 

It was not until film-makers started searching for an “authentic” America in the 1960s that Hollywood started taking country music seriously.  There was country music on the soundtracks of both Bonnie and Clyde and Five Easy Pieces, and in the 1970s Robert Altman’s Nashville used the country music scene to cast a critical eye over the country as it prepared for its bicentennial.  Since then there have been biopics of both Loretta Lynn (Coalminer’s Daughter) and Patsy Kline (Sweet Dreams).  However neither Lynn not Kline ever enjoyed the success or achieved the iconic status of Johnny Cash.

Here's the trailer: