my father and the man in black films
Guy Lodge2 August 2013
In-the-family documentaries are often more emotionally rewarding for their makers than their viewers, and such is the case with this heartfelt but decidedly marginal addition to the Johnny Cash nostalgia buffet.
Director Jonathan Holiff, estranged son of Cash’s longtime manager Saul, picks away at his late father’s audio journals of life on the road with the country legend, unwisely supplementing them with ropey re-enactments.
Cash devotees will find stray nuggets of interest here, but may be thrown by repeated digressions into Holiff senior’s fatherly shortcomings and eventual suicide — intimate stuff for which this, or arguably any, film isn’t the right outlet.
