Review: Johnny Cash at Folsum Prison (2008)

[Steve Rhodes]

JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes

RATING (0 TO ****):  ***

Filled with great songs and a great story, JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON is, 
nevertheless, a film that manages to disappoint more often than it should. 
Relying too often on still images, animation and very wide video shots of 
buildings and prison yards, the movie is more to be listened to than 
watched.

Whenever I would close my eyes, physically or metaphorically, I was the 
happiest.  As Johnny Cash's wonderful music washed over me, I was in heaven. 
But when I looked at what was on the screen, I kept getting distracted and 
somewhat annoyed with director Bestor Cram's choices.  It does, however, get 
better in the last half, when Cram mixes in more old footage of Johnny in 
concert.  The talking heads (prisoners, Johnny's fellow music makers and 
Johnny's children) tell good stories about Johnny and about their lives in 
the era when Johnny was singing.

While the images frequently disappoint, the story is consistently 
intriguing.  We learn, for example, that, as everyone knows, before Johnny 
Cash spent his time in prison, he grew up on a small cotton farm in a poor 
area of northeast Arkansas.  Actually, everything in the previous sentence 
is true, except that, contrary to the widely held belief, Johnny never was 
in prison.  As the movie demonstrates, he showed an enormous empathy for 
prisoners and for prisoners' rights and he wrote a long list of songs about 
prison, but he was never incarcerated in one.

Of the many surprises revealed in the film, perhaps the most fascinating is 
that Johnny stole -- okay, maybe adapted is a better term -- the song that 
set his career on the road to success.  After hearing the slow and melodic 
"Crescent City Blues," he borrowed the tune and the phrases, but he speed up 
the rhythm and switched out some of the words, coming up with his signature 
"Folsom Prison Blues."

JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON runs 1:27.

The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival 
(www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009.

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