My Year of Flops by Nathan Rabin Read Free Book Online Page A

nothing more fascinating than watching a hippie dude wander around with an evocative song as his soundtrack. But this time, the hippie dude in question is Jesus.
    Just as he adopted the form of a coyote and led Homer Simpson on a spiritual journey, Cash leads us on a greatest-hits tour of Jesus’ life and times. We follow the Good Shepherd as he’s baptized by John the Baptist, picks up his entourage of 12 followers who treat him like he’s the first coming or something, is anointed the Son of God, and, to use arcane religious terminology, loses his shit and freaks the fuck out upon discovering moneylenders in the temple. We learn the origin of all of Jesus’ beloved catchphrases, from “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” to “Judge not, lest ye be judged” to “Ask and ye shall receive.”
    Gospel Road
offers the gospel according to Johnny Cash. When Cash tells the camera, “Jesus addressed men as men and not as members of any particular class or culture. The differences which divide men, such as wealth, position, education, and so forth, he knew were strictly on the surface,” he seems to be espousing his own radically egalitarian mind-set as much as Jesus’.
    Though it follows Jesus’ life in a linear fashion,
Gospel Road
frequently gives over to abstraction, as when Cash pontificates on Jesus’ teachings during an endless helicopter shot of water glistening in the sun.
Road
is all about pretty images and pretty words; it doesn’t particularly matter how the two fit together. In the film’s boldest move, it places the crucified Jesus and his cross in the middle of a modern city, collapsing the impossible gulf between the past and the present in the process, and underlining the timelessness and contemporary resonance of Jesus’ story and message.
    â€œI bet Mary Magdalene walked this same beach I’m walking on. I wonder what Mary Magdalene really looked like. The Scriptures don’t tell a lot about her, but what little is told has made her the subject of more speculation and controversy than any woman I’ve ever heard of. Jesus was to suffer much criticism for his association with people of questionable character.” Cash narrates as he walks along the beach,still looking directly into the camera and emphasizing the words “questionable character” in a manner that underlines how directly it applies to him.
    Within the context of the film, Cash didn’t have to wonder what Mary Magdalene looks like, since June Carter plays her. The film never explains why exactly Mary Magdalene has a Southern drawl, or why a novice actor is the only thespian allowed to deliver her own lines, instead of having Cash narrate her story.
    â€œYou know, we can’t forget the fact that Jesus was human,” Cash reminds us in the film’s key line.
Gospel Road
is ultimately as much about Cash as it is about Jesus. It is a film of trembling earnestness and unquestionable devotion. When Cash reflects on how he likes to imagine children frolicking with his Savior, the film becomes uncomfortably, even unbearably personal. Cash is revealing himself and bearing witness. The coolest motherfucker on the planet is willing to look defiantly uncool if it means saving souls. In this context, it almost seems unfair to criticize the film on aesthetic and artistic grounds, since
Gospel Road
is intended first and foremost as an evangelizing tool and a profound expression of personal faith.
    Gospel Road
makes its relatively brief running time feel like an eternity. It’s more home movie than Hollywood, but that’s much of its scruffy charm. It’s really the story of Cash’s faith; in its own ham-fisted fashion, it embodies the yearning for deliverance and singular combination of strength and vulnerability that made Cash such an enduring icon.
    Cash took the failure of
Gospel Road
hard. The public that had so warmly received him