Even being that man in Reno would be better than this
I would like to announce the following: I, Initial Reid Lastname, did not like Walk The Line. I mean, I really didn't like it.
Just as it takes a special kind of talent for a good singer to sing badly, I almost have to admire the horrible direction of this movie, in that it's something of an accomplishment to take a tumultuous life and a remarkable love story and turn it into a film so boring that even the story of Garth Brooks would be more interesting.
Is it possible to make a music bio flick that's good without resorting to The Big Songwriting Moment, the moment when the biggest line of the artist's biggest song pops out in a tense moment? It was bad enough in Ray, but the BSM in Walk The Line was so strange that I couldn't even figure out what was going on. "Why is June Carter just sitting in her parked car saying, 'It burns, it burns, it burns...'?", I thought. This thought was followed shortly by, "Ohhhh", as she sat at her dining room table weakly dribbling out "Ring of Fire".
It's that weakness that defined this movie's badness. I can't stand the trend in movies where the filmmakers take advantage of advanced sound technology to deliver dramatic lines (or even entire conversations) at near-whispers. I can understand the logic behind the tension that it creates, not only does no one really talk like that, but if you do as Walk The Line does and pitch EVERY two-person conversation in the entire movie at whisper volume, it robs all the energy from a movie and makes it as dull as dishwater.
It just seems so amazing to me that a life story that has no shortage of tension can be translated into a movie that's sluggish and boring. Did anyone really feel like they were getting an insight into The Real Johnny Cash as Joaquin Phoenix nervously warbled "Fulsom Prison Blues" for his audition before a lethargic Sam Phillips?
I found myself through the whole movie thinking of my last semester at college, when I finally got up the nerve to take Fundamentals of Acting. In one of the scenes I had to do for the class, it seemed right to me to play the role of a broken-hearted guy being left by his girlfriend as quiet and crushed. But Jack, the genius professor of the class, told me that the part needed more energy, that I needed to feel the part, get more worked up, show more emotion. I thought he was wrong at first, but he was so right. You don't have to scream and shout, but real conflict takes energy and emotion. And even when you're broken and desperate, you don't whisper.
Walk The Line really could have used some of Jack's advice.
7 comments:
Interesting, I loved this movie - thought it was the most entertaining film I saw last year. Ah well, I guess everyone has a different take on things.
WRONG, Doug! Everyone has the SAME take on things!
Oh! Yours is just the first strongly negative reaction I've heard about it - so I was surprised - we're all supposed to be clones - doncha know? Anyway, I was also going to write some sort of detailed response about why I liked it, but then I couldn't remember...and that was the best I could come up with.
I thought the movie was entertaining...but the music dork in me was annoyed that the filmmakers took a lot of historical liberties (and I'm by no means at all a Cash expert). A) Johnny Cash had played prisons before he did the Fulsom show that produced the famous album. B) Johhny and June did NOT get engaged onstage. That scene was second in retardedness only to the aformentioned "it burns, it burns". So, my viewpoint: fun movie, but as always I'd much prefer more of a just-the-facts documentary approach.(And I'm not even mentioning the fact that it's totally annoying thinking about someone buying the soundtrack of this movie, featuring the vox of the actors, instead of an actual Johnny Cash record. Ok, so maybe I am mentioning it.)
I wondered about the historical liberties, too, but I wasn't going to get too picky. Most of those bio pics are going to play around with the truth a lot.
But I did wonder about the onstage proposal, and I noticed in the All Music guide bio that they said this: "Early in 1968, Cash proposed marriage to Carter during a concert." I dunno the details. I'd look it up on Wikipedia, but I don't think that would decide anything.
There seems to be some debate as to the historical accuracy of the onstage marriage proposal. I combed "Cash" by Johnny Cash for any mention of this and could find none. My guess is that while may have proposed to her onstage, it likely wasn't THE marraige proposal that was actually accepted. But who knows. Here's another one: Johnny actually had two brothers. So I know they liked to play up the whole good brother/bad brother early death influenced his life thing, but that seemed to me more borrowed from "Ray" than rooted in actuality. Not that I doubt that losing a brother was devasting to him. You know what I mean...
I really liked the movie, although I've heard interviews with Johnny Cash talking about how he wrote "Folsom Prison Blues" that were much more interesting than the two minutes it received in the movie. The "man in Reno" line is definitely Johnny's BSM, but it was glossed over in the movie.
What I thought was weird was that the two Cash boys were named John and Jack. Jack is a nickname for John, so did they name both kids John? Who were these parents?
Oh, about the whispering thing: they weren't trying to be dramatic, it was just that he was really hungover all the time and anything above a whisper made his head hurt.
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