There are a lot of terrific things to love about Walk The Line. I've been a fan of Reese Witherspoon for years, and this performance was wonderful. As June Carter Cash, she was amazing. I haven't seen Transamerica but this performance was Oscar-worthy. I also loved how both leads did their own vocals. I was not familiar with Johnny Cash's music apart from Folsom Prison Blues and Walk The Line, but Phoenix's performances were completely convincing. Ebert remarked that he was a big fan of Cash and was convinced it was dubbed. He was "completely gobsmacked" to learn that Joaquin Phoenix did his own singing.

The scene which made this movie for me, though, was the scene onstage the Tropicana nightclub in Las Vegas. He's learnt that June Carter is going to leave the show and he drowns his anger and frustration in a cocktail of booze and drugs. He then shows up on stage completely trashed, but goes out there and starts singing the hell out of the song. As his body and mind fail him, the sheer force of his will, his utter determination to keep playing and keep singing even as his world is falling apart and his life is slipping away, shines out of his eyes. He spins and glares at June with a frightening intensity, a fanatical light shining out of his eyes more brightly than the spotlights which silhouette him, compounded by his ferociously knotted brows, his clenched jaw, and the beads of sweat running down his face. This is a man possessed.

The best movies speak to you and communicate essential things about life and human nature. In that one moment, Walk the Line showed me myself, refracted through the prism of Johnny Cash's life and Joaquin Phoenix's portrayal. I didn't necessarily like what I saw, but it was as if I stared into the abyss and it stared back at me.

EDIT: Since writing this entry, I've been downloading Johnny Cash's music and listening to it avidly. My musical tastes aren't genre-specific but rather about the quality of a singer's voice and their ability to interpret music (I might do a whole entry on this topic sometime). So I've really enjoyed Cash's music. Quite fantastic. I highly recommend it.