HAVING just seen the film Walk the Line, I’ve got Johnny Cash’s deep, gravelly tones blaring out of the computer. Going to the cinema here in Cyprus is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The seats are comfortable, the sound is great, and the cinemas totally empty.
There were exactly 12 of us watching this Oscar nominated film (it picked up Best Actress in the end), which is four more than when I went to see the BAFTA award winning best British film of the year Wallace and Gromit, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. How do they make a profit? I don’t know.
I didn’t know much about Cash nor his music, but it is a story that inspires you to believe in the power of love and survival, of a warm heart in a cold world and most importantly in the ability to forgive. Humans aren’t perfect.
“I will let you down, I will make you hurt,” sings Cash and he does. But he had the humility and honesty to admit his mistakes and the guts to try and put them right.
There is a memorable line in the film when Cash wants to perform in Fulsom prison and is being advised against it by his agents. If you sing to rapists and murderers you’ll alienate those good Christians who buy your albums, says his agent. “Then, they ain’t Christians,” says Cash.
Cash was no angel but he had that depth and wisdom that comes from knowing tough times. And so it was at the recent BAFTA awards, when the producer David Puttnam received his Academy fellowship from Sir Richard Attenborough, and made a moving acceptance speech, moving because he knew that Attenborough had lost family in last year’s tsunami, moving because he could understand personal suffering in the face of overwhelming events.
His 1984 film, The Killing Fields, was a powerful true story an indictment of war, and the American conduct of the war in Cambodia in particular, but for me the essence of that film was the power of friendship and the will to survive. Puttnam has long been an advocate of films that carry meaning. That entertain and inform but don’t shirk from exploring the truth about humanity.
His personal commendation at the BAFTAs went to George Clooney for his film, Good Night, Good Luck, which tackles the hypocrisy and intimidation that was McCarthyism. Puttnam acknowledged that he knew that Clooney had put his “career on the line” to make his film, that it is not easy to go against powerful vested interests.
Walking the line, means not just sticking to your principles but being prepared to put yourself in the firing line, to speak out for injustice, to speak for those without a voice. But it is nothing without compassion and the realisation that we all tread the thin line between behaving well and behaving badly and that forgiveness must be part of humanity. For Cash, his particular line was to conquer his inner demons, born of childhood experience. He managed it by gaining strength from his friendship with June Carter and a strong dose of self-awareness.
Why did Cash always wear black? He sings, “I wear it for the sick and lonely old, For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold, I wear the black in mournin’ for the lives that could have been… I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back, til things are brighter, I’m in the man in black.”
We have our own line here in Cyprus. It’s a physical fact but it needn’t be an emotional one. When Lord Puttnam praised the films such as Brokeback Mountain, Walk the Line, Good night Good luck, Crash and The Constant Gardener for bringing meaning back into cinema. He reminded me of the last lines of The Killing Fields. Cambodian Pran, having been persuaded by his friend, the American photographer Sydney Schanberg to stay and help him cover the story gets betrayed and left to his fate in Cambodia. As Sydney escapes, Pran remains to face imprisonment, terrible torture and the death of his family. When he finally reunites years later with his photographer friend Sydney in New York, the film ends by Sydney asking, “You forgive me?” Pran replies,” Nothing to forgive, Sydney, nothing.”
Cash would have sung to that.
