Walking the Genre Line
March 7th, 2006
At the Academy Awards on Sunday night, host Jon Stewart joked that Walk the Line was a remake of last year’s Best Picture nominee Ray, only with white people. Unfortunately, he was sort of right.
I haven’t seen Ray, but I did watch Walk the Line this past weekend, and while the music was enjoyable and the acting good (hurrah for Reese Witherspoon’s accent), the film suffered from too close an adherence to “biopic of a musician” genre standards. They tried to cover too many issues and too many years, and there wasn’t time to sufficiently develop any of the themes.
The film opens with the tragic death of Johnny Cash’s brother, setting this up as the event that defined Johnny’s life. Johnny’s father says to him, “God took the wrong son,” and the film thus introduces what seems like it’s going to be a theme for the rest of the movie: Johnny’s troubled relationship with his father and with other authority figures.
However, except for a couple of moments near the end of the movie, the father theme gets dropped. Porpoise pointed out that there are hardly any scenes involving Johnny’s producers or managers. It seems like developing these characters would have been the natural way to continue the father theme while Johnny’s father isn’t actually on screen.
That’s just one example of the several rabbit trails the film introduces, drops, and then speedily resolves in the conclusion (Cash’s faith is another–there’s one scene in which he and June approach a church, but that’s about all we get). I much prefer biographical films that take a small slice of their subject’s life, and let that part represent the whole. Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown (Queen Victoria) and Shadowlands (C.S. Lewis) are good examples of this approach.
Anyway, I was glad to have seen Walk the Line, for a refresher on Johnny Cash’s and June Carter’s music, if nothing else. I’ve been singing their songs non-stop for the past few days.
Speaking of which, here’s something for all of you out there who are also fans of both Johnny Cash and J.R.R. Tolkien!
Entry Filed under: Movies
1 Comment Add your own
1. Jillian | March 7th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
I’ve been very tardy in my movie watching this year. But Walk the Line has definitely been on the list. I did see Brokeback Mountain, however, and I’m curious to see if BBM was superior to Walk the Line.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed