Interestingly, the uproar over author James Frey's little effort, A Million Little Pieces, isn't over the quality of the writing (it's rubbish), but whether it's "true." We've entered a time where a craze for the "real" has manifested itself in both the gutter end of the culture (reality television, tell-all memoirs) and the high end (documentaries, the publishing-house boom in biographies and histories). This craving of the actual (however contextualized) serves as balance to this epoch of spin and lies we're mired in. As Michael Moore rightly stated in his famous Oscar speech, "We live in fictitious times." And so we are collectively sheltering, for sanity's sake, in nonfiction.

In Hollywood, this demand for reality has produced a recent raft of biopics — a tried-and-true film genre that has generated cinematic biographies over the years of everyone from the Apostle Paul to Bob Crane. A notable subset of this genre is the popular musical biopic, a collection that would include Yankee Doodle Dandy (George M. Cohen), I'll Cry Tomorrow (Lillian Roth — and who could resist the tagline: "Filmed on location; inside a woman's soul") and Night and Day (Cole Porter). But within the last year we've seen Ray (Ray Charles), De-Lovely (Porter again, though it's best to stick with Night and Day), Beyond the Sea (Bobby Darin), and now Walk the Line, which is a look at the life of Johnny Cash. Though there are some problems with this film's structure, Walk the Line is by far the best biopic to come down the rails in a while.

Cash's story is quintessentially American: a bleak, rural childhood, an Army stint, a dead-end job to feed the wife and kids, a nascent talent recognized, a rise to the top and the inevitable slide greased with dope and demon rum. But Cash's life also comes with that rarity in American biography (not to mention country ballads): the happy ending. In meeting June Carter (from that fabled tribe of Opry greats), Cash found his other half — that missing part that Aristophanes mythologized and that Hedwig of that angry inch sang of in "The Origin of Love." Johnny and June completed each other, becoming inseparable even in the timing of the deaths.

James Mangold's film is fully faithful to this couple's life together. If anything, he's too faithful. Walk the Line could stand some pruning. Too often it feels like the film is unfolding as pages in a biography are turned, especially in Cash's descent into alcoholism and drug abuse: "And then ol' Johnny went an' got drunk, and ..." The famous drive of Cash's music, which the character of June likens at one point in the film to a moving train, is often needed from Mangold's pacing.

Mangold does capture Cash's world superbly. From the torturous fields of Arkansas, where the lad picked cotton with his gospel-singing mother, to the neon glare of a Las Vegas stage, Mangold has a painter's eye for detail. The film is bookended by Cash's concert at Folsom Prison, an event that forever changed the man and his music.

Rightfully, Line has gained notice for its actors, particularly Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon as the Cashes. Phoenix, after serving as a solid second lead in a number of films, is finally given his chance to star, and he's electric. His haunted, solemn Cash is the man in black of memory; a troubled soul who found, late in life, the opportunity to relax into his own skin.

Witherspoon as well is finally getting her due. A good actress who's appeared in a number of worthwhile projects (and her share of drek) proves finally to be a talent to reckon with. What Coal Miner's Daughter, the biopic of Loretta Lynn, did for Sissy Spacek's career will be repeated with Witherspoon.

The film is also noteworthy for its stars performing all of the singing themselves. Phoenix is so successful at channeling Cash's deep earth rumbling sound that he's even followed in his character's footsteps and recently played a gig at Folsom.