Notes from New York I: Character in the Biopic While Toeing "the Line"
04 January 2006
written for the Goldring Arts Journalism Program's
New York City Immersion;
edited with input from David Sterritt,
recently retired film critic for The Christian Science Monitor
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The Johnny Cash created in James Mangold’s new film "Walk the Line" is a man of many parts: a music legend, a devoted friend and follower of wife-to-be June Carter – devoted to the point of pugnacity – and a reformed drug addict. The film flows from Cash’s Arkansas childhood, working the fields with his family and listening to Carter on the radio, to the concert where June agrees to marry him. Somewhere in the middle, the point of that story is lost.
For Mangold’s Cash is not a character in any limited sense. He is a broad, real figure. Too real: in all of his intricacies the reasons why Mangold decided to tell his story are never clear.
Taylor Hackford’s "Ray" – by way of example – is mostly about Ray Charles and his music as they effected the musical culture in which Charles lived. The film digresses into Charles’ romantic life and into his drug addiction, sure, but these are echoes, almost, to a life that, to Hackford, really amounted the success Charles had in developing a style.
Thus, if James Mangold’s new film "Walk the Line" is meant to be the successor to last year’s much-celebrated "Ray," it falls short, and for one reason: Cash the character is too broad.
The best film biopics do not deal with the full tilt of their subjects’ lives. If the filmmaker advances under the assumption that he is creating a character in the likeness of a real person, rather than recreating, like Frankenstein, the person himself, then the burden of accuracy is lifted; as "Raging Bull" screenwriter Paul Schrader said, he wrote a Jake LaMotta character, not Jake LaMotta.
Certainly, any limiting approach toward a historically real person makes the person’s on-screen character lose dimension, but the filmmaker’s responsibility here is not to dimension. It is not even to truth. Simply, the filmmaker is responsible for evoking the few, precise aspects of a "great" man’s life that – to the filmmaker – makes his story worth being told.
fiilm sort of functions under the assumption that we already know why johnny cash is great...but what if we don't? i didn't know anything about cash other than a few of the words of 'ring of fire,' but i have to say, i really enjoyed this film. joaquin phoenix is amazing. and how much would you give to be in memphis at sun records in the mid 50s??
that being said, i just wish we could get past the idea of the angelic woman-savior. 'ray' had one, 'walk the line,' 'a beautiful mind,' 'pollock'... poor geniuses, my feminine charms will save them...
This is very interesting, because I had nearly the same take but in reverse - Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles always felt like a spookily-accurate impression of the real man, but always that - an impression, while Joaquin Phoenix (and Mangold) created a real character, a man named John R. Cash with real flaws and insecurities that happens to be quite a bit like the actual Cash. We're dealing with two different takes on genius, I think. In one we see how genius is mediated and influenced by hard experience, a constant struggle (WTL) and in the other genius is an unstoppable force that once it gets going streamrolls everything in its path until its excesses finally bring it down (RAY). The former is more interesting and believable from a dramatic standpoint and certainly engenders more sympathy for its subject. And I would argue that in WTL despite the overly simplistic, often cliched take on Cash's life (close-up on the pills, anyone?) the "limiting" factor you are missing WAS the love story. Although I have to agree with Jenny on the annoying trend she mentions, after June and John first lay eyes on each other everything from the music to their family lives is somehow shaped by this one relationship. Art, you often talk about how the creation of a world within a film doesn't have to perfectly resemble a known reality, but it has to at least play by its own rules, the parameters it sets for itself. Well, I would argue that WTL does just that. It keeps its head down and tells its story. I always hear about RAY: 'it works because it always keeps the music front and center' and yet it tries to finesse the entirety of the complex culture that Charles' music came out in the 50's with all-too brief scenes like his refusal to play in the South during segregation. Ray is a hero! C'mon. I was bummed we didn't see more of WHY Cash was the Man in Black - his social consciousness, the importance of those hymns he grew up with - but I realize the movie had modest aims (or smartly refused to stretch a thin premise) and such digressions are never advantageous for a genre like the biopic, which needs a narrow scope for effective storytelling. Because that's what it's all about at the end of the day, right?
P.S. Re: Sun Records - Did Jerry Lee Lewis' hair really look like THAT?!