I laughed. I cried.

I saw "Walk the Line" yesterday, and it's a terrific film. This is not a review, just a few thoughts on a few scenes.

But before that, I'll get the usual business out of the way. Joaquin Phoenix is absolutely fantastic in the role of Johnny Cash. Despite what Roger Ebert says, no, you can't close your eyes and believe it's really Cash singing. But it's a very good facsimile, and certainly good enough for suspension of disbelief.

Reese Witherspoon is also excellent as June Carter. I would have liked to have seen a little more about her life away from Cash. She's portrayed as really having it together, as being just about the only real adult performer on tour. But what about her two failed marriages? I don't know anything about that, or whether it would have made for a better film, but it does leave me curious.

There are a lot of very good scenes, but I was especially moved by one sequence near the end of the movie. Cash had sunk a tractor in the mud near his house, and mainly to try to please his tyrant father, he's gunning the tractor back and forth, trying to free it. Mother Maybelle Carter tells June "Go down there!" June replies "I'm not going down there!" Her mother says "You're already down there."

We haven't seen very much of the Carter matriarch, but here she is, telling her daughter to save this ornery man, a man who has caused her daughter nothing but pain and trouble. She knows what June hasn't admitted to herself; that despite Johnny's erratic behavior, his drug addiction, the failed marriages, and all of the other obstacles, the two of them belong together. Metaphorically, June was down in the mud with Johnny, and the two of them needed to get out, together.

Later, as Cash is locked up in his own house, going through detox, Maybelle & Ezra Carter chase off Johnny's drug dealer at gunpoint. I was laughing and crying at the same time.