What’s up, I’m dos Santos, and this is Ulven Reviews: movies and series from all over the world and all eras. Today let’s talk about ReMastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black, a documentary film released in 2018, directed by Sara Dosa and Barbara Kopple.
Trying to capitalize on the popularity of Johnny Cash, former American president Richard Nixon invited him to the white house to do a little presentation. The documentary discusses the context and the aftermath of this presentation.
This one will be a little shorter because it’s more of a recommendation, a complement of the last review of Walk the Line. So, let’s begin.
ReMastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black! ReMastered is a series of little documentaries, all of them talking about the relation between music, politics, and society.
This one is of the time when Richard Nixon tried to use Johnny Cash as a political advantage, as a tool to boost his popularity. I thought it would be nice to review it now, after the walk the line review. So one movie completes the other.
This ReMastered episode tells the story of Johnny Cash since his childhood, so it gives more context. It interviews people with first-hand knowledge of the story and also people who study his biography.
So, not only we have new information that wasn’t present in the movie Walk the Line, but also have corroboration of many of the scenes included in the movie. For example, in the Walk the Line review, that I mentioned Jack’s death scene that I saw the confirmation in this remastered episode.
ReMastered talked more about Jack and also how Jack’s death affected Johnny’s relationship with his father. Another fundamental information about Johnny is how patriotic he was. He and his family, actually. They were the type of patriots that think you should support your president, no matter what, and no matter the party.
So this documentary shows, in a way, Johnny Cash’s political evolution. How he became more interested in certain topics of the American society, including the rights of native Americans and the ongoing Vietnam war. Until everything culminates in the presentation of the White House, a beautiful presentation, and a beautiful message from Johnny Cash.
We also see a little bit of the aftermath of the presentation. How Nixon was a weasel piece of shit who lied to the American people, and who left the young soldiers to die.
But I’ll talk about the Vietnam war at another time, because remastered is not actually about the Vietnam war, despite being a very important topic for the documentary. The same can be said about Johnny Cash’s biography. The documentary touched on these topics to contextualize the actual focus of it, that is: Johnny Cash’s presentation in the White House invited by Richard Nixon.
It’s a very specific topic, and in this matter, they succeeded. It’s interesting to watch but is not life-changing or anything remotely like that. I think someone that is a big Johnny Cash fan might enjoy it more than I did.
This one is not even my favorite ReMastered episode. The one of Victor Jara hits much closer to home. However, I definitely recommend it. We must know the history, we must be knowledgeable about the events that happen in our past.
ReMastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black was a decent watch. Really interesting, and that definitely touched me, although not as much as some other episodes. Regardless, I’ll give ReMastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black 8 Moons!
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Thanks for watching see you in the next video.
Dos Ratos 