The Power of Song
Among other things, Walk the Line shows the playful, potent charge that comes from singing with someone else. It makes perfect sense that June and Johnny's romance built up over a microphone. The glances they give each other, especially Johnny's to June, are smoldering.
I've gotta say that good as Reese Witherspoon is as June, Joachim Phoenix moved me more with his somber, tortured performance. Cash is an iconic figure, but Phoenix doesn't try to fill in those outlines -- he burrows into the dark, sad heart of the man and is entirely convincing as someone who never believed the hype of his fame, in fact who can hardly believe he's worth one thin dime. As he clumsily courts June it's refreshing to see her calling him on all his bullshit, but Cash struggles for so long it's almost unbearable.
The movie's fairly conventional but the story is genuinely gut-wrenching. That Johnny and June end up as life partners seems too good to be true, a Hollywood ending, but it's real. He died 4 months after she did!
In other news, I got new glasses, the mice are back, and I'm closing in on filming my robot secretary sketches. YouTube will be over by the time I get these babies filmed. But it's happening, slowly but surely.
posted by La Misma at 12:34 PM
4 Comments:
So, did "latinos" put you off scrabble forever?
I had a a bingo early last game and you beat (the tar out of) me the rest of the way
11:33 PM
beckett, I apologize for abandoning our game. It's the scrabble dictionaries that are putting me off scrabble. I challenged 'Latinos' and all the dics said it was good, but they do all the words in capital letters so case isn't an issue. 'Latinos' is a proper noun in every other dictionary I checked in.
It seems like I keep having to halt the game to say "I challenged and lost but the dictionaries are wrong." I just got frustrated.
I just barely beat you the last game -- by three points or something!
5:36 AM
"Walk the Line" was definitely a powerful movie. I especially was moved by the scene where Cash was breaking down in a fit trying to get his tractor unstuck from the mud, and the elder Carters encouraged June to go down and help him. She was hesitant because she didn't want him to pull her down into the miserable depths, and her mom basically said, "June, you're already there."
2:50 PM
I liked that scene with the tractor too. It seemed so sad that his father put him down about having a fancy tractor but just getting it stuck in the mud. Such a typical, cold taunt from a critical parent. That Johnny can't resist trying to prove his father wrong is also poignant, because it's so hopeless.
It's funny but I found June a little cold in that scene -- that her mother had to tell her to go to Johnny, when she was still trying to resist caring about him.
7:55 PM
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