Quote:
Originally Posted by elle
what do you consider the essence of Johnny Cash, that Phoenix captured? again, i'm missing his whole essence in Phoenix, as i described. the essential man in black who i loved was just not there. but you know, the family was involved and approved the movie, so obviously there was something there, just not essential to me.
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I thought he had Cash's swagger and confidence without being arrogant. And also even before he took that role, I thought that Phoenix was psychologically troubled, had a difficult and controversial youth and that he would do a good job of bringing Cash's struggles to the screen and he did. I believed Phoenix's anger and defiance along with the gentleness I saw in Cash's later years (as when he guested on Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman).
I thought the movie made June really shallow, but Phoenix handled Cash's contradictions well to me and it became about the story, rather than me judging whether he looked and sounded like Johnny Cash. He felt like Cash to me and Reese felt like a pixie.
Also, although I never wanted Robert Patrick on the X-Files, I really got into the scenes between him and Cash and I had only read about Cash's relationship with his father before the movie and then after I saw the movie those scenes made me feel almost as if I had seen a documentary rather than just a film adaption. It seemed real to me, even if it probably was not faithful to what happened in real life.
I think my biggest problem was that I had seen a lot of June and Johnny together in real life and I didn't buy that, but Phoenix made it easy for me to accept the other parts of Cash's life that I hadn't seen. Michele