Thing called love

Stellar performances elevate Cash biopic.

THE PROBLEM WITH any biopic is, well, obvious: How do you compress a person's life into two hours? Especially when it's a famous person's life, filled with exciting, tragic, historic, iconic, and other moments that demand faithful re-creation?

It's worth mentioning right up front that Walk the Line doesn't really shake up the template set down by Ray, Great Balls of Fire, La Bamba, the recent Elvis miniseries, and any number of other true musical tales: Start with a significant childhood event (preferably traumatic, as when li'l "J.R." Cash's beloved older brother dies in a wood-shop accident) to set the tone, then let that sucker echo throughout the performer's life. In Cash's case, his brother's death soured an already tense relationship with his father; it also ravaged his psyche, deepening the dark side that so enhanced his songwriting talents.

Coscripted by director James Mangold (Girl, Interrupted) and Gill Dennis, and based on two Cash autobiographies, Walk the Line leans a bit heavily on Cash's guilt 'n' grief complex. It also relies on lurching transitions that map Cash's creativity in the most literal way possible (see Johnny watch a movie about Folsom Prison! Cut to Johnny writing "Folsom Prison Blues"!) There's no doubting Mangold's reverence for Cash – though, seriously, everyone loves Johnny Cash – but thankfully the filmmaker is, at times, able to nudge past hero worship and point out that the man had some gnarly flaws. This ain't Selena, in other words.

Though Cash doesn't actually encounter June Carter until the film's second act, her presence is established from the start. Young Johnny listens to young June on the Cash family radio; older Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) flips past her picture in a magazine while killing time in the Air Force. In their Memphis, Tenn., home, Cash argues with first wife Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin) over his musical ambitions while Carter's voice croons, appropriately enough, "Time's A Wastin' " through the speakers.

Cash takes Carter's song to heart, ditching his door-to-door salesman gig after catching sight of the young Elvis Presley (Tyler Hilton) ducking into Sun Studios. With help from Sam Phillips (Dallas Roberts) – you can practically see the dollar signs in his eyes when he first hears the line "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die" – Cash and his band join a tour with Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis (Waylon Malloy Payne), Roy Orbison (Johnathan Rice), and other notables – including Carter (Reese Witherspoon). Sparks fly, pills are popped (Cash's downslide into addiction starts with these foreboding words: "Elvis takes 'em!"), duets are sung, and country music's greatest love story takes its well-documented, agonizingly obstacle-ridden course.

Cash's legend, especially when packed into the biopic mold, may be a familiar one, but Walk the Line still springs a few surprises. The lead actors are outstanding; both Phoenix and Witherspoon do their own singing and strumming. With shiny black pompadour lacquered into place, natural born brooder Phoenix eerily mimics Cash's wounded snarl and gravelly voice. He's also got some below-the-surface similarities going on: his own tragic older brother, plus a history of substance abuse that, one suspects, can't help but shade his performance.

If Phoenix seems kinda obviously perfect as Cash, Witherspoon is Walk the Line's stealth weapon. It wouldn't be the Cash story without plenty of Carter, and Walk the Line takes time to explore her character (the same can't be said for Cash's first wife, who apparently has only two emotions: irritation and exasperation). As the film shows, Cash's deep love for Carter is the one constant in his tumultuous life. Though they don't actually start a relationship until years after they meet, their undeniable attraction simply weaves into the fabric of their lives. To the Witherspoon-haters who scoffed when they heard she was cast (I'm not even a hater, and I scoffed; I also scoffed when I first saw photos of her take-me-seriously-now brunette hairdo), know this: Her thoughtful, passionate performance gives the film its heart – not to mention Walk the Line's best Oscar shot.

'Walk the Line' opens Fri/18 in Bay Area theaters.