DVD: Walk The Line

Enough already with the childhood trauma. It is becoming a painfully banal Hollywood truism that any issues that arise later in a person life can be explained by something bad that happened to them as a child. It's like an understanding of psychology based on reading a single paragraph of a Sigmund Freud book. And like the boy who cried wolf, when there is a film that might justify use of an explanation like that, you are so tired of hearing it you don't believe.

As such we have Walk The Line, the biopic of Johnny Cash. If you have seen Ray you know the plot. Brother dies as a child, no decent Father figure, marries childhood sweetheart, becomes famous musician, starts taking drugs, cheats on wife, finds new love, quits drugs and everything ends happily ever after. Thus seems to be the life of any musician according to Hollywood.

What is damning is not that we have seen this type of thing before, but that the film tells you no more about Johnny Cash and his music than Ray did, despite the latter film being about a completely different person. All we learn about his music is that he wrote Folsom Prison Blues after watching a film and he invented his musical style on the spot when Sam Philips told him his gospel was as dull as Dido slowly painting a wall Magnolia. The film is almost entirely disinterested in his music. It's as if being a great musician is of now interest to an audience, but being a bastard and a junkie is.

Despite the cliched plot and absence of insight the lead performances have be justifiable acclaimed. Both River Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon bring their characters to life and give them more depth and empathy than the script deserves. It is the acting equivalent for feeding 5000 with a fish and a slice of bread. And while the ever-so happy ending rings false, with Cash acting the bad man but being portrayed an angel, the acting and the music carry the film through. Just don't expect to learn about the man inside.