Comprehensive information and links about Walk the Line

Walk the Line is an Academy Award nominated and Golden Globe Award winning film chronicling the life of Johnny Cash, American country singer, focusing on his younger life, his romance with June Carter and his ascent to the country music scene, with material taken from his autobiographies. The title is taken from the title of one of Cash's best known songs, "I Walk the Line".

s production budget is estimated to have been $28,000,000.

The film previewed at the Telluride Film Festival on September 4, 2005 and went into wide release on November 18. This film has been nomininated for five Academy Awards including Best Actor (Joaquin Phoenix) and Best Actress (Reese Witherspoon).

As of February 20, 2006, the film grossed a total of 116.3 million dollars in the domestic Box Office. On February 28, 2006, a single-disc DVD and a two-disc collector's edition DVD is scheduled for release.

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Plot

The film details Cash's (Phoenix) life from his growing up as the son of a cotton picker in rural Arkansas to his drug addiction, subsequent rescue by future wife June Carter (Witherspoon), and his famous concert at Folsom Prison.

In the opening scene, we see an outside shot of Folsom Prison, where the grounds are quiet, and the two solitary guards on their perch peer towards the main building. The camera moves towards the prison as faint music plays in the background. As the camera passes empty halls and cells, the music becomes louder and clearer, and cheering of inmates can be heard. The camera settles on an shot of inmates cheering as Cash's band is playing a vamp. A table saw sits ominously on a table in the center of the screen, as a solitary hand casually strokes the blades. After repeated calling, we are made aware that the hand belongs to Cash, and it is later revealed that the voice belongs to the prison's warden, calling for him to go on stage.

The next scene depicts Cash as a boy (then called "J.R.") and his brother Jack listening to the radio, and hearing a 10-year-old June Carter singing, providing a foreshadow into J.R.'s obsession with her in the future.

Early in the movie, Cash and Jack discuss their different strengths and weaknesses in regard to the Bible and hymns. Jack, who is training to become a pastor, and therefore "needs to know the Bible front to back", is much better at dealing with the wording and stories of the Bible. J.R., who can sing well like his mother, is very adept with the hymns they sing at church. A few scenes later, Jack is sawing wood as a job for a neighbor when Johnny declares it to be boring, and would rather be somewhere else. With Jack's permission, he leaves to go fishing. As he is walking back home, he is intercepted by his father, flush with blood stains on his overalls, asking "Where have you been?" As J.R. quickly learns, Jack has been fatally wounded by the saw. J.R.'s relationship with his father was strained since he was young, yet was made much more severe with the death of Jack.Several years later, J.R. joins the Air Force and is posted to Germany. He appears not to enjoy his time there, but finds solace in playing a guitar he bought and writing songs - one of which becomes "Folsom Prison Blues". Following his discharge, he marries his girlfriend Vivian.

Vivian and John (as he is now generally known) live in relative poverty while John works as a door-to-door salesman. One day, he walks past a recording studio and is inspired to put a band together (which his wife describes as being made up of "two mechanics who can't even play") to play gospel music.Cash and his band audition for Sun Records in front of Sam Phillips, and Cash is told to play a song which sums him up. Despite his bandmates not knowing the tune, he strikes up "Folsom Prison Blues" and is rewarded with a contract, which soon has him touring with the other Sun artists. On this tour (along with Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley), he meets June Carter, who is both a singer (although she claims to have no talent) and a comedienne in the performances.

Cash's career goes from strength to strength, and he finds himself spending more time with June, who divorces her husband at this time. When his romantic intentions are rebuffed one night in rural Georgia, Cash is offered drugs and alcohol and soon begins to behave erratically. June tells him (and many of the other artists on the tour) at one point that they cannot "walk the line", prompting Cash to write "I Walk The Line".This erratic behaviour peaks one night when Cash invites June onstage to sing a duet. Despite her objections, Cash decides on a love song and kisses her in the middle of the performance, after which she storms off the stage and they go their separate ways - despite Cash's protest that "it was only a song".

Some time later, Cash, still addicted (his father tells him that he would do well to start "sleeping at night...or eating"), takes his wife to an award show to which June also goes. Despite his wife's objections to the level of interest he is paying her, Cash persuades June to come out of semi-retirement and tour with him.The tour is a great success, although backstage Cash's wife is critical of June's influence. After one performance, Cash and June sleep together in her hotel room. The next morning, as June is on the phone to one of her daughters, she notices Cash taking several pills. That night's concert sees Cash incoherent during his customary "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash" opening, as well as forgetting the lyrics to a song, losing control of the microphone stand, kicking the footlights and ultimately passing out. As a result, the rest of the tour is cancelled and June gets rid of Cash's drugs. It is at this point that a distraught June begins to write "Ring of Fire".

Later again, the tensions in Cash's marriage flare up as he attempts to put up "pictures of my band" (including a very large one of June) over his wife's objections. The pair separate and Cash moves to Nashville, where he shares living quarters with Waylon Jennings.Cash attempts to reconcile with June, which involves a long walk to her house. On the way back, he collapses in the rain and - on coming round the next day - sees a large house near a lake and promptly buys it. His parents, and the extended Carter family (June, her daughters and her parents) arrive for Thanksgiving, at which time Cash Snr berates Cash over his lack of achievement. Cash's response is to try furiously to remove a stump from the ground with his tractor, an attempt which ends with the tractor reversing into the lake and Cash being rescued by June (who was told by her mother "You're already down there", in response to her protests that she was not going to help him out). Under the influence of the Carters (which extends to June's parents, rifles in hand, chasing away Cash's drug dealer), Cash cleans himself up.

As he returns to normal, Cash notices that many of his fans are prisoners, so he presents a proposal to record a live album inside Folsom Prison. His record company is dubious, arguing that the musical world has changed in the time Cash was rehabilitating, however he says bluntly that he will perform on a given date and the label can use the tapes if they think the music is any good.The concert is a great success, and Cash embarks on a tour with June and his old band. En route to one performance (at 2AM), he proposes to June, who turns him down. This appears to have been a common event, as Cash tells her that that was the last time - June's response is that she doesn't like "re-runs". At the concert, June tells Cash that he can only talk to her onstage.The concert features "Ring of Fire", which Cash credits to June before persuading her to join him in a duet of "Jackson". In the middle of the song, Cash stops singing and June looks concerned. Cash responds that he can only continue singing the song with her if they will get married and so proposes to her onstage. June, despite her shock, says yes.

Phoenix and Witherspoon performed their own vocals in the film's numerous stage appearances. Phoenix's vocal work was so impressive that many critics and fans could barely tell the difference between his and the original Cash vocals.This movie was a secret project before 2000, Johnny Cash was involved in talks of this secret project which became Walk the Line.Before their deaths in 2003, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash selected Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon to play their respective parts.

Critics' reaction

Critics generally responded with positive reviews, garnering an 83% on Rotten Tomatoes. For example, reviewer Michael Sragow[1] wrote, "What Phoenix and Witherspoon accomplish in this movie is transcendent. They act with every bone and inch of flesh and facial plane, and each tone and waver of their voice. They do their own singing with a startling mastery of country music's narrative musicianship."

Yet some, like reviewer Jeffrey M. Anderson [2] believed the film suffered from the typical fate of the biopic, stating that important events are distilled into meaningless and unrealistic circumstances. Further, Anderson wrote, the director Mangold "stretches and dilutes the core story until it resembles less a great man's life than a TV movie of the week."

In addition, some critics also state that this movie is more of an actor