Sunday, November 20, 2005
Greenlighting "The Man in Black"
If you enjoy the music of Johnny Cash and the Carter family, you might want to rent "I Walk the Line" when it comes out on DVD. Then you can hum over the all-too-conventional dialog and just TIVO from song to song, bypassing holes in a script that you can drive that vintage Sun Records tour bus through.
But don't waste your money on the movie in theatres now.
Sure, the music is well done (to a point) and Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon (started from scratch, musically illiterates, as has been reported ad nauseum) sound like the real deal. Still, they don't seem to have the electrical, charismatic on-stage presence of Johnny and June and I found it hard to believe the actors even like one another, on or off screen.
We start with young Johnny or J.R., who is glued to his family's period piece radio in the living room, trying to listen to the Carter Family (with young June) on a faraway broadcast. But his early musical interest is repeatedly quashed by his father and nourished by his mother, who sings hymns while the family picks cotton in rural Arkansas.
The family is poor and the kids had to perform the type of labor only illegals might consider now. Fine. But when Johnny's brother is shown working in a mill with a saw, I turned to my brother and said "37 seconds to saw accident and deathbed scene,"
I was wrong. Actually it was more like 15-20 seconds, but this scene, and about 10 others, were telegraphed...poorly conceived and weakly written.
You could see this train a comin', comin round the bend... from miles away.
Johnny's father is portrayed about as flatly as a character can, as a cad, who rues his son's death and tells the family the wrong son has just died.
Paging Drs. Freud and Phil here...this conflict is played as the modus operandi for Johnny's screwups and angry lyrics, but we never really get past the superficial theme. I'm thinking there has to be some subtlety here, some gray area they are glossing over in the interest of time and laziness, but... wait, rolling down the tracks is wooden character #2, Johnny's first wife, who comes off as a one-dimensional '50s mom with absolutely zilch interest in his career. According to the Cash children from this marriage, some of whom have complained or walked out of the screening, their mother did support his career and was nothing like the mean-spirited ogre in the film.
How does this happen? Who greenlighted this crap?
We run through Cash's problems with drugs (which ones specifically we're not told) and his eventual arrest (a bunch of agents somehow track him and are waiting at the bottom of the proverbial escalator to "give him a warrant.") All the while we are fast forwarding and flashing back and although it's not hard to figure out what's happening, it's disconcerting. You don't have to use the time travel technique in a movie to tell the story and I think linear time would have been just fine here.
(At this point, I could run on about the ridiculously drawn-out sequence of Cash trying to "sweat out" the drugs but I won't. It was like a bad Mannix episode, circa 1974. Or the predictable scene where Cash rolls over in bed, looking for more pills, only to hear June say "Oh, I flushed 'em, honey."
Didn't see that comin' round, either.
Did I say the music isn't that bad, the production pedigree in the credits top flight? It bears repeating.
And why do they only mention Carlene Carter and Roseanne Cash when they had more kids in previous marriages? Because those are the only kids the public might identify or recognize?
Now we get to the plot holes.
The biggie occurs when Cash, obviously drunk, is living with Waylon Jennings. We know he's outta cash because when he walks into a bank and asks the cashier to cash a check, he is denied. With no car and no phone service, he walks umpteen miles from seedy Nashville to the country house inhabited by the Carters and June blows him off. So he retreats down the country lane, only to collapse on a hill in a thunderstorm. Next thing ya know, Cash wakes up to the sound of some house builders nearby and presto, he's bought himself a house in Hendersonville by a lake. With what money, we have no idea.
Much of the movie is spent on Johnny's failed first marriage (again with the predictable phone calls home from the road and the typical "We miss you daddy" plaints from the kiddies.) We get the wife angrily confronting June and telling her to "stay away from my family." We get the wife surprising Johnny at a rehearsal. This is the stuff of bad made-for-TV movies in the '70s, not what passes for quality these days. Again, weak and lazy writing is to blame. Do they get divorced? We never know, because we zip forward to John's fumbling pursuit of June again.
Can't forget the glaring production holes either.
In an early scene, Johnny and bro are walking and skipping down this dirt road, en route to a fishing hole. In a later scene, a much older Johnny is walking down the same dirt road, en route to the big city. Same road and same dried up mud puddle (back left) in both scenes...filmed probably hours apart.
Did I mention the music isn't half-bad?
I don't see how major reviewers have granted 3 or 4 stars to this piece of work. Roger Ebert, whose work I greatly admire, and someone I had the chance to meet while a grad student at Medill, liked the film immensely. But Ebert has become an easy mark in recent years and his critiques are not as sharply penned anymore. My sense is that the late Gene Siskel would have called him on this. But Ebert is not alone, by any means; most of the major reviewers have given it high marks.
Johnny did not propose to June on stage either but when she said yes, after much prodding (didn't see that comin' either), most women in the audience probably turned to hug their dates. Nothing wrong with that. I'll give 'em a pass on that stroke of creative genius.
Finally, a personal aside. I've been a fan of Cash and the Carters for years, a little unusual for an urban kid from Philly. My father took our family to Kennywood Park near Pittsburgh in the early '70s, where the Carter Family was scheduled to play an afternoon concert at the hatshell. Despite a thunderstorm delay of more than an hour, and the fact the remaining audience consisted of our family (6) and a few others, the Carters graciously played 7 or 8 songs, took requests and talked with us from the stage. I think Mother Maybelle and Anita were there; I'm almost certain June wasn't, although there were a few kids singing harmony.
Bottom line - if you don't mind movie writing that jumps around, glosses over some big conflicts and incompletely handles others, if you are happy with superficial detail and are satisfied with the bad-seed-boy meets sort-of-hard-to-get-but-not-that-hard-to-get girl, then this is your kinda movie. If you're looking for a factual portrayal of Cash's existence (his early years at Sun are done well) and probing investigation of his psychological demons, you're out of luck.
But don't waste your money on the movie in theatres now.
Sure, the music is well done (to a point) and Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon (started from scratch, musically illiterates, as has been reported ad nauseum) sound like the real deal. Still, they don't seem to have the electrical, charismatic on-stage presence of Johnny and June and I found it hard to believe the actors even like one another, on or off screen.
We start with young Johnny or J.R., who is glued to his family's period piece radio in the living room, trying to listen to the Carter Family (with young June) on a faraway broadcast. But his early musical interest is repeatedly quashed by his father and nourished by his mother, who sings hymns while the family picks cotton in rural Arkansas.
The family is poor and the kids had to perform the type of labor only illegals might consider now. Fine. But when Johnny's brother is shown working in a mill with a saw, I turned to my brother and said "37 seconds to saw accident and deathbed scene,"
I was wrong. Actually it was more like 15-20 seconds, but this scene, and about 10 others, were telegraphed...poorly conceived and weakly written.
You could see this train a comin', comin round the bend... from miles away.
Johnny's father is portrayed about as flatly as a character can, as a cad, who rues his son's death and tells the family the wrong son has just died.
Paging Drs. Freud and Phil here...this conflict is played as the modus operandi for Johnny's screwups and angry lyrics, but we never really get past the superficial theme. I'm thinking there has to be some subtlety here, some gray area they are glossing over in the interest of time and laziness, but... wait, rolling down the tracks is wooden character #2, Johnny's first wife, who comes off as a one-dimensional '50s mom with absolutely zilch interest in his career. According to the Cash children from this marriage, some of whom have complained or walked out of the screening, their mother did support his career and was nothing like the mean-spirited ogre in the film.
How does this happen? Who greenlighted this crap?
We run through Cash's problems with drugs (which ones specifically we're not told) and his eventual arrest (a bunch of agents somehow track him and are waiting at the bottom of the proverbial escalator to "give him a warrant.") All the while we are fast forwarding and flashing back and although it's not hard to figure out what's happening, it's disconcerting. You don't have to use the time travel technique in a movie to tell the story and I think linear time would have been just fine here.
(At this point, I could run on about the ridiculously drawn-out sequence of Cash trying to "sweat out" the drugs but I won't. It was like a bad Mannix episode, circa 1974. Or the predictable scene where Cash rolls over in bed, looking for more pills, only to hear June say "Oh, I flushed 'em, honey."
Didn't see that comin' round, either.
Did I say the music isn't that bad, the production pedigree in the credits top flight? It bears repeating.
And why do they only mention Carlene Carter and Roseanne Cash when they had more kids in previous marriages? Because those are the only kids the public might identify or recognize?
Now we get to the plot holes.
The biggie occurs when Cash, obviously drunk, is living with Waylon Jennings. We know he's outta cash because when he walks into a bank and asks the cashier to cash a check, he is denied. With no car and no phone service, he walks umpteen miles from seedy Nashville to the country house inhabited by the Carters and June blows him off. So he retreats down the country lane, only to collapse on a hill in a thunderstorm. Next thing ya know, Cash wakes up to the sound of some house builders nearby and presto, he's bought himself a house in Hendersonville by a lake. With what money, we have no idea.
Much of the movie is spent on Johnny's failed first marriage (again with the predictable phone calls home from the road and the typical "We miss you daddy" plaints from the kiddies.) We get the wife angrily confronting June and telling her to "stay away from my family." We get the wife surprising Johnny at a rehearsal. This is the stuff of bad made-for-TV movies in the '70s, not what passes for quality these days. Again, weak and lazy writing is to blame. Do they get divorced? We never know, because we zip forward to John's fumbling pursuit of June again.
Can't forget the glaring production holes either.
In an early scene, Johnny and bro are walking and skipping down this dirt road, en route to a fishing hole. In a later scene, a much older Johnny is walking down the same dirt road, en route to the big city. Same road and same dried up mud puddle (back left) in both scenes...filmed probably hours apart.
Did I mention the music isn't half-bad?
I don't see how major reviewers have granted 3 or 4 stars to this piece of work. Roger Ebert, whose work I greatly admire, and someone I had the chance to meet while a grad student at Medill, liked the film immensely. But Ebert has become an easy mark in recent years and his critiques are not as sharply penned anymore. My sense is that the late Gene Siskel would have called him on this. But Ebert is not alone, by any means; most of the major reviewers have given it high marks.
Johnny did not propose to June on stage either but when she said yes, after much prodding (didn't see that comin' either), most women in the audience probably turned to hug their dates. Nothing wrong with that. I'll give 'em a pass on that stroke of creative genius.
Finally, a personal aside. I've been a fan of Cash and the Carters for years, a little unusual for an urban kid from Philly. My father took our family to Kennywood Park near Pittsburgh in the early '70s, where the Carter Family was scheduled to play an afternoon concert at the hatshell. Despite a thunderstorm delay of more than an hour, and the fact the remaining audience consisted of our family (6) and a few others, the Carters graciously played 7 or 8 songs, took requests and talked with us from the stage. I think Mother Maybelle and Anita were there; I'm almost certain June wasn't, although there were a few kids singing harmony.
Bottom line - if you don't mind movie writing that jumps around, glosses over some big conflicts and incompletely handles others, if you are happy with superficial detail and are satisfied with the bad-seed-boy meets sort-of-hard-to-get-but-not-that-hard-to-get girl, then this is your kinda movie. If you're looking for a factual portrayal of Cash's existence (his early years at Sun are done well) and probing investigation of his psychological demons, you're out of luck.
