Alternative to What: "Walk the Line" (2005)

Scene from Walk the Line

Welcome to Alternative to What: a weekly column that tries to find a great alternative to driving to the multiplexes. Based on releases of that week, the selections will either be thematically related or feature recurring cast and crew. The goal is to help you better understand the diversity of cinema and hopefully find you some favorites while saving a few bucks. At worse, this column will save you money. Expect each installment to come out on Fridays, unless specified. 

THIS WEEK:

Walk the Line (2005)

- Alternative To -

I Saw the Light (2016)

The musician biopic is a dime a dozen as a movie genre. All it really takes to be halfway decent is to have a great actor at the center to sing the songs and give whatever familiar behind the scenes turmoil a little energy. Adding his name to the line-up is Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams in I Saw the Light. It is likely that without seeing the trailer, the film is already playing out in your head. There's the redemptive arc in which Williams figures out his iconic songs and learns to live as a person. This is not an attack on the movie - which still could end up using the format to tell a lively story. It's just that the story of the musician is one that's very familiar.
For instance, Walk the Line is arguably one of the best in the past few decades to maybe embody the tropes, but also live and breathe through an Oscar-nominated performance by Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash. The story about his romance with June Carter Cash (Reese Witherspoon) is one that plays out with a certain familiarity, but also is allowed to progress as its own gripping story thanks to Phoenix's ability to embody the turmoil and addictions of Cash. He was so good that the film arguably inspired its own spoof movie Walk Hard a few years later. However, it wasn't enough to win Phoenix an Oscar, as he lost ironically to another biopic. This time it was Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles in Ray. 
But what is conventional about the story is missing in the performance. You buy Phoenix as Cash at every turn. He sings like him and he embodies the rebellious spirit that he brings to his live shows. In the third act, he plays at Folsom Prison while insulting the guards and giving a wise-cracking assessment of his surrounding. It is a joy to see him play around with the character and make the biopic genre at least somewhat tolerable as an experience. It also helps that Witherspoon is also at her best as the controlling girlfriend who saves Cash's life on more than one occasion.

Much like the best of musician biopics, it isn't so much the story that needs to be given credit. It's the performance. Not the actors' performance, but the music performance in which the songs are played. It is a matter of how convincing that they can be executed. Frankly, Phoenix gives it his all and provides an emotional core to the middle - proving the passion that most musicians would have for their craft. Yes, the story of pinning his hit songs is familiar, but it's how he sings them that inevitably has weight. You buy into the passion and soon you mistake the actor for the individual.

Of course, this does seem like a cheat when talking about musician biopics and this week's I Saw the Light. It does seem unfair to poorly judge the format just because of other people's conventional nature. However, it does feel a tad too honest to admit upfront that you know what you're getting here. If you know the music, there's little incentive to be surprised by anything. If you don't, it may end up serving as a decent yet fictional history lesson. I'm not blaming I Saw the Light for being this way. I'm merely saying that even the best follow this formula, and it will be difficult to reinvent this wheel. Just enjoy the wheel for what it is and everything will be fine.