This was another solid bio-pic, featuring brilliant performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. With their electric chemistry, I'd surprised haven't appeared in more films together.
Johnny Cash (Phoenix) only feels at home strumming away on his guitar, despite his wife, Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin) upset that they can't pay the bills. Johnny hasn't had any easy life, his older brother died when they were still children and his father, Ray (Robert Patrick) believes that the wrong son died, so that can't sit well with a child.
June Carter (Witherspoon) on the other hand, has supportive parents, at least compared to Johnny's, even though they feel her sister was the more talented singer, and she's been on stage since she was a child. So it is inevitable that she and Johnny run into each other, literally. And then they start touring. Poor June is stuck with a bunch of drunk, horny men all the time, but she doesn't take any shit from them, putting them in their place time and time again.
However, the touring takes its toll on John, as he turns to the pills and booze and nearly dies several times, all the while harboring a not-so-secret crush on June, cheating on his wife both mentally and physically. Viv runs away from the problem while June hits it, head on. She is the one who finally gets John clean. However, while they may be very much in love, Viv hates June and wants her to stay away from the children and John is only just clean and he asks way too many times and basically has to coerce an acceptance from her by popping the question in public so she can finally say yes.
The film ends happily, with John and his father somehow mending the fence though they must do it off camera. John's album, that he fought for (in a plot point that needed tons more screen time) is one of the top selling albums of all time and of course, he and June end up getting married happily for the rest of their lives.
So, while the screenplay is solid, there is still so much left unsaid and uncovered. We don't know how Viv and Johnny met nor do we fully understand why she wasn't supportive of his music, when that's clearly his dream and we don't have the reason behind most of his best-selling songs and while I don't approve of the relationship between June and John, I do think the feelings were real. And you felt like you were watching John and June on screen, not actors portraying them, so that is no easy feet. Witherspoon fully deserved her Oscar and Phoenix should have won, except he lost to Philip Seymour Hoffman's Truman Capote in Capote. Grade: B+
Side Notes:
-Witherspoon's character undergoes two divorces and is judged horribly for it.
-I wonder why Witherspoon hasn't been asked to sing more after this superb role. Same for Phoenix for that matter.
-Goodwin is also good but you're not supposed to like her character and you don't.
-June's father chases off John's drug dealer with a shot gun.
-John's brother dies in a tragic accident while he was slicing wood. No one was watching him.
-The water in the prison is truly disgusting.
-Even though it was the 60s, I surprised that John wasn't ordered to go to rehab when he arrested with his pills.
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