Trent Reznor reflected on the video saying, "I pop the video in, and wow. Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps. Wow. I felt like I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore. It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. Somehow that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning. Different, but every bit as pure."
The song's producer Rick Rubin said of the video, "I cried the first time I saw it. If you were moved to that kind of emotion in the course of a two-hour movie, it would be a great accomplishment. To do it in a four-minute music video is shocking." Rick Rubin now sees the video as a historical document of Johnny Cash.
Johnny Cash, who was 71 years of age at the time of filming in February 2003, had serious health problems. His frailty is evident in the video. He died seven months later, on September 12. His wife, June Carter Cash, who participated in the video (shown gazing at her husband in several sequences), died three months after filming, on May 15, closely preceding him in death.
The music video was ranked the greatest music video of all time by NME.