Paul Edgecomb, a pensioner, is given a blast from the past one day in his nursing home, which sets him off to reliving his experiences as a guard and executioner on the Green Mile in the 1940s, a Death Row hall. A sensitive man (Hanks) in a tight-knit team, he runs a peaceful hall, easing the last days of the condemned. The death assigned to guilty men is sadly mirrored by the terminal brain tumour from which his boss� wife is suffering.
The relative peace is disturbed by the arrivals of three newcomers. The first is John Coffey (Duncan), a gargantuan black man who rather too easily personifies the term �gentle giant,� and who, as the flashback shows, was found with two raped and bloody dead girls in his arms. There is also Eduard Delacroix (Michael Jeter), the campy, vicious teacher�s-pet of a new guard who uses his contacts to get away with thoroughly upsetting the practically Utopian atmosphere of the Green Mile. The final arrival is �Wild Bill� (Rockwell), who seems to be the antithesis of Coffey, in that he is small, ratty, noisy, and clearly guilty of whatever it is he has done.
It is when Coffey, in what looks like an attack, manages to cure Edgecomb of his cystitis just by laying-on of hands, that the film begins to distinguish itself from other sensitively-made prison films (Dead Man Walking, The Shawshank Redemption). Faith healing, and the supernatural power of good at the lowest point in the world, are the themes of this film. Soon the guards put together a plan to harness Coffey�s powers in saving the boss�s wife.
All this is beautifully portrayed, with delicate touches of humour and a variety of interesting events to push the film on well. The eternal fascination of Death Row, in this era presided over by Ol� Sparky, produces strong questions about the right to take life, as well as exploring the baser reasons a person might have in taking up this kind of job. This is exemplified when Delacroix cruelly allows an execution to go ahead without the proper preparations, out of sheer curiosity, which leads to a long and horrific death for the criminal.
However this is where some of my objections start. I think there is a too-easy delineation between �good� men and �evil� ones; I mean, Edgecomb might be all very comforting in telling them all Yes there�s a heaven, don�t worry, but for Christ�s sake, the man works on Death Row � he can�t be THAT nice. The same goes for Coffey and Wild Bill � they represent poles of good and evil that are a little too clear-cut for my liking, and although they do add a nice, if rather coincidental, narrative push, the film fails to be incisive enough on the very questions it purports to deal with. Overall, the guards have an air of Julian, George and Dick telling the nasty deviants what�s good for them that seems pretty damn self-righteous.
Similarly normative instincts have led to the queering of Wild Bill and Delacroix, the two most unquestionably despicable characters of the film. Their occasionally campy portrayals (especially Delacroix�s) sets up gay identities as uniquely deviant, which for a film set in the forties, is a lazy thing to do, and only reveals that forties-style prejudices still unconsciously exist today. However as the characters are said to be very close to those in Stephen King�s original novel, these are likely to be King�s prejudices, not Darabont�s.
My final beef is with Coffey�s portrayal. For me it is a little too close to the �faithful jolly nigger� images that you find in forties Hollywood films (think of Mammy in Gone with the Wind). As he is the only black character in the film, this is problematic. He is only too happy to accept his fate as the fall guy, conveniently not challenging the white, middle-class Edgecomb too much on the ethics of killing an innocent man, and leading too easily to the predictably tear-jerking final scenes. Yet this also sets him up as a Christ-like black man, which I suppose is a more progressive way of viewing it.
I�m possibly being over-harsh and all my objections are political. Viewed in terms of emotive response, direction, acting, storyline, in fact any other cinematic criterion whatsoever, this is a very powerful film. Hanks does his usual excellent job, the supernatural theme gives the Death-Row questions a new twist, and it�s well worth a watch � if you�re white, straight, middle class and not on Death Row. |
