The Green Mile

Directed by Frank Darabont
Starring Tom Hanks, Michael Clarke Duncan, David Morse, Doug Hutchison
USA, 1999
Rated R (violence, intense images and scenes, language)

C

THE RIDICULOUS EPIC
Halfway into The Green Mile, I began to groan- there is a scene in the film in which the miraculous hero, a sheepish convict named John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), heals the prison warden’s wife who has cancer, and it feels almost like a desperate, intensified ripoff of a Touched By an Angel episode. Frank Darabont’s first film since the wildly and unexpectedly successful The Shawshank Redemption is slightly deeper than that. Though it has much of the same personnel as Shawshank (like that earlier film, it is directed by Darabont, scored by Thomas Newman, based in a prison, and adapted from a Stephen King novel), it is very different. While the first film was about traps, hope, and inevitable or eventual freedom, The Green Mile employs an iffy yet partly amusing supernatural element and an almost flawless cast to literally spell out its themes of miracles, suffering, death, and one’s conscience to its audience. There is no subtlety here, though, because Darabont seems to revel in his constant use of overflowing melodrama and, as a Mr. Showbiz critic asserted in a review of the film, histrionics. When I came out of the theater after having spent three long hours experiencing the movie, I was stunned. I wasn’t sure how I felt about The Green Mile, but I knew I had felt something. The movie pushes out all these Gump-ish emotions and scenes of gleeful, ugly exhibitionism and tender Jimmy Stewart-like acting. I am susceptible to melodrama, so The Green Mile worked its spell on me for its duration. Yet, when I think about it, the movie crumbles from its unnecessarily lengthy running time and the lack of substance to justify it.

The movie is based on Stephen King’s novel, which was originally released in thin installments. Despite the fact that I feel The Green Mile is a story (and movie) with a considerable amount of missteps, I feel King is the closest the ‘90s have come to a consistently frightening Master, a horror-based, macabre version of Hitchcock. He is a great writer, not only of bizarre tales but of spiritually uplifting (albeit still grisly) material. This particular story is set in the Great Depression in a prison nicknamed ‘The Green Mile’ for its lime-colored floor. It is a ‘mile’ on which convicted criminals come to walk into the arms of death. The guard, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), is like every other Tom Hanks character to date (not to pigeon-hole the very gifted actor). Edgecomb is a man of kindness and he tries his best to fill the prison with a reserved pleasantness so the men who are soon to meet the electric chair (here nicknamed ‘Old Sparky’) can live the remainder of their doomed lives peacefully. Fellow guard Howell (David Morse) is eager to have such an atmosphere, too.

With the coming of two new Death Row inmates, we meet one of Green Mile’s two antagonists. Prisoner "Wild Bill" Wharton is a child molester and murderer and his cruel antics are reminiscent of the strange behavior that went on in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He urinates on passing guards from the inside of his cell in one scene, and that’s not the most disgusting thing he does. The second villain of the film has already presented himself: Percy Wetmore, a sadistic, cruel, pompous, and easily frightened guard at the prison gives everyone a hard time by throwing his weight around, continually mentioning his connections to important people who can get his colleagues fired. Percy Wetmore’s utter disregard for human life and complete abandonment to inhumanity and torture spawns the ugliest and foulest scene in The Green Mile in which an overlong execution-gone-wrong is thrust upon the audience. I thought it was ruthless of Darabont to stretch out the scene which starts to become viciously chaotic when Percy purposely neglects to soak the sponge of a soon-to-be electrocuted inmate who had previously mocked him. Since the sponge was not soaked, the electricity took over the inmate’s still alive and conscious body, slowly and painfully consuming it with a blue fire. We have grown to have a mild affection for this particular inmate and to see him suffering the electricity devouring him is almost unbearable. Not since Dead Man Walking have I seen a death scene so intense. Here, though, the execution scene serves no good purpose except to prove Percy is truly rotten at heart, which we already know.

John Coffey is the other new addition to Death Row. Paul, through all the anarchy, discovers the supernatural powers of Coffey, a tall, wide, black man convicted of murdering and raping two white girls. It is evident from the start that Coffey is gentle and straightforward. When Coffey heals Paul’s grueling bladder infection, Paul becomes convinced Coffey can help the prison warden’s wife who suffers from a brain tumor.

The Green Mile is too eager to divide its characters into definite ‘good’ and ‘bad’ labels. Such is a typical method of Hollywood films. I’m not one to analyze movies until they fall apart, but The Green Mile, with all its virtues, is not able to sustain a sense of credibility about it. The elements of God-like healing in the movie are almost banal. I do not blame the movie for being simple-minded, but I accuse it of trying to be eloquent with entertaining one-notedness. It doesn’t have a great deal to say that audiences haven’t heard before; so suggests the poster taglines emphasizing the unpredictability of miracles. The Green Mile becomes a bit too calculative and the plot twists are placed and manipulated with a big studio rationale.

But The Green Mile can be earnest and potent, too. It uses its themes of death, pain, miracles, and karma and poetic justice very nicely and it was uplifting before my scrutinizing thoughts took hold (alas…) It is a big movie and though it is unnecessarily long, it spends its three entertaining hours leisurely. Some may say that its length only helps us develop a sense of the prison’s atmosphere and the relationships between the characters. Admittedly, the first superfluous hour does help to establish a certain sedate and simultaneously anxious mood for the movie. There is a very enjoyable camaraderie between the protagonists in the movie. The Green Mile wastes no time in building an epic scope, even though its intellectual terrain only goes so far.

As for the performances, there are some great acting gems in the film. One actor in particular outshines the entire accolade-deserving cast and he is Michael Clarke Duncan who plays Coffey. He so closely resembles a cross between Lennie, the huge but innocent klutz in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and Forrest Gump. There is a sweetness, childishness, and unknowing idealism and innocence that is the essence of all three of these characters and Duncan is not only able to get these shades of personality across to the audience but he has a booming and commanding God-like quality as well. Tom Hanks is usually very good and his performance here is sensitive and doesn’t attempt to steal Duncan’s thunder. Hanks’ role here is no acting showcase; it has its commanding moments but, for the most part, it is a wonderfully reserved piece of acting. Doug Hutchison provides nothing but evil for his wicked character and it’s a highly entertaining romp of a performance.

I’m no longer as fascinated with the year-end Oscar game anymore. The Academy Awards, while they are still exciting, even adrenaline-rushing, for me, they have never been awards celebrating merit and quality but rather popularity at that moment in time. I am no predictor but I think it is safe to say The Green Mile has a very good chance at winning several nominations when the votes are counted early next year. It may even win a few awards. Let’s just hope The Green Mile is awarded for what is wonderful and simple in the film rather than for its unworthy sense of one-sided complexity.

By Andrew Chan

** Some fellow friends have drawn my attention to the resemblance of Coffey's supernatural powers and his wrongful execution to the Christ story. There are bold similarities. Perhaps that serves as an explanation for why the film seems so sterile and jarringly far-fetched. **

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