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Very much in the manner of an “unplugged” acoustic album that showcases the musicianship of a major artist without distracting flash and filigree, “The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash” is a tightly focused yet impressively multifaceted documentary that attempts nothing less than to delve past familiar myths and illuminate the soul of its fabled subject. Director Thom Zimny, who took a similarly stripped-to-essentials approach to another immortal pop-culture icon in his widely acclaimed “Elvis Presley: The Searcher,” has fashioned, with the full cooperation of the Cash estate, a richly textured portrait infused with sympathetic but unvarnished honesty, one that likely will endure as necessary source material for any future biographer of the Man in Black.

The free-form narrative designed by Zimny and scripter Warren Zanes is anchored in the legendary 1968 concert Johnny Cash gave for inmates at California’s Folsom State Prison, an event that was recorded on a phenomenally popular live album,...

Thom Zimny gives Johnny Cash the same thoughtful exploration he provided for Elvis and Springsteen in his latest music-focused doc.

The title of Thom Zimny’s new Johnny Cash documentary, The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash, is a reference to something Cash’s mother said to him after hearing him sing as a boy. “God has his hand on you,” she said, “don’t ever forget the gift.” In that one quote, Cash’s mother sums up the two driving forces of Cash’s life, God, the search for spirituality despite the darkness that surrounds and occasionally envelops us all, and that famous baritone voice, that was both able to inhabit a wide-range of American personas and experiences while championing the underdogs of our society.

Though mostly a cut-and-dry chronological look at The Man in Black’s life, The Gift uses Cash’s iconic 1968 Folsom Prison concert as an anchor.

Johnny Cash’s mother called his cool baritone voice “a gift,” one he thankfully bestowed onto listeners for nearly half a century. It was gold when he was around, prized as he grew older, and priceless now that he’s gone. If the title wasn’t any indication, Thom Zimny’s latest musician-based documentary, The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash, celebrates his immortal gift. But the film transcends the rudimentary responsibilities of the biography as it uses Cash’s story to exemplify the power our voices grant us, especially when we trust them.

Several family members, producers, and friends speak about Cash and his time at the top, bottom, and eventual return to the top of the music industry; The Gift, unlike the famed biopic about Cash, Walk the Line, is a start-to-finish chronicle of the musician’s life. What’s unique is that other than the occasional archival photograph,...