The Green Mile Full Film

[Nazarena Lugg]

Itshows that the guards are comforting to the prisoners and that the prisoners return this with their trust and open natures- they are willing to talk to them about what they think lies ahead of them when they die, their fears.

To go with this there is also a pan of different faces as they sit and seem to be waiting for something (which links to the shot of the clock)- but what? And how are these particular characters important to the film?

At last the pace slows down even more at the very slow at end as we see the man walking down the green mile, which signifies the end of the trailer and the fact we are going to be left on a tense note as we are left unable to determine what the outcome of the film will be (will equilibrium be restored? etc)

On a more interesting note, the pace reflects the criminals lives: they have had their action in their life of crime, and this film represents a different part of their lives- the final part. How now, as they wait for death to come for them, their lives are slow as they ponder over the things they have done, and this makes it dark and tension building as well as a unique look on criminals and the things they go through.

And when we compare it to the film- we can see that the trailer is brilliant for implying everything but saying absolutely nothing. Making the audience insinuate what may happen but are still left not knowing for sure..

He constantly verbally abuses Del, swearing at him/calling him names/making fun of him, (Which is quite typical of a thriller and authority/criminal relationship, but Percy truly has no valid reason for his words nor actions. So he is quite something else)

He stamps on Mr Jingles out of spite and hatred, (which is cruel tot he mouse and Del- he knows how much Del is attached to the mouse, so he seizes his opportunity and boasts in being able to kill it at last.)

And I think this a beautiful example of how close the relationship between Del and Brutus/Paul is. They care about him so much that they completely make up a place that would be absolutely perfect for his companion to stay after his execution. Even if it is a completely made up place, Del seems to believe and put faith into it, ultimately meaning that Paul and Brutus are giving him something happy to hold onto before his death, and that way his death will be as calm and as un-foreboding as possible (because he no longer has to worry about what will happen to Mr Jingles when he is gone- which is all he has left to care for- because Brutus and Paul have promised to take him to the best possible place, giving him strength to cope with what awaits him the next day. It gives Del strength because he knows that although he is going to meet a terrible end, his companion will live on and will be cared for Brutus and Paul.)

And when Del is just about to be executed, he reminds the guards one last time not to forget about their promise to take Mr Jingles to Mouseville, which shows that he has a close relationship with them and trusts them to look after the only thing he has left to love and care for- his pet mouse. This also displays how Percy spitefully attacks Del in his most vulnerable state, which could never be predicted from the trailer alone as neither of the characters are introduced let alone the relationship they share-

"We think of this place like an intensive care ward of a hospital." So says Paul Edgecomb, who is in charge of Death Row in a Louisiana penitentiary during the Depression. Paul (Tom Hanks) is a nice man, probably nicer than your average Louisiana Death Row guard, and his staff is competent and humane--all except for the loathsome Percy, whose aunt is married to the governor, and who could have any state job he wants, but likes it here because "he wants to see one cook up close." One day a new prisoner arrives. He is a gigantic black man, framed by the low-angle camera to loom over the guards and duck under doorways. This is John Coffey ("like the drink, only not spelled the same"), and he has been convicted of molesting and killing two little white girls. From the start it is clear he is not what he seems. He is afraid of the dark, for one thing. He is straightforward in shaking Paul's hand--not like a man with anything to be ashamed of.

This is not a good summer for Paul. He is suffering from a painful infection and suffering, too, because Percy (Doug Hutchison) is like an infection in the ward: "The man is mean, careless and stupid--that's a bad combination in a place like this." Paul sees his duty as regulating a calm and decent atmosphere in which men prepare to die.

"The Green Mile" (so-called because this Death Row has a green floor) is based on a novel by Stephen King, and has been written and directed by Frank Darabont. It is Darabont's first film since the great "The Shawshank Redemption" in 1994. That, too, was based on a King prison story, but this one is very different. It involves the supernatural, for one thing--in a spiritual, not creepy, way.

Both movies center on relationships between a white man and a black man. In "Shawshank" the black man was the witness to a white man's dogged determination, and here the black man's function is to absorb the pain of whites--to redeem and forgive them. By the end, when he is asked to forgive them for sending him to the electric chair, the story has so well prepared us that the key scenes play like drama, not metaphor, and that is not an easy thing to achieve.

The movie is told in flashback as the memories of Paul as an old man, now in a retirement home. "The math doesn't quite work out," he admits at one point, and we find out why. The story is in no haste to get to the sensational and supernatural; it takes at least an hour simply to create the relationships in the prison, where Paul's lieutenant (David Morse) is rock-solid and dependable, where the warden (James Cromwell) is good and fair, and where the prisoners include a balmy coot named Delacroix (Michael Jeter) and a taunting monster named Wharton (Sam Rockwell).

Looming over all is the presence of John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a man whose own lawyer says he seems to have "dropped out of the sky." Coffey cannot read or write, seems simpleminded, causes no trouble and exudes goodness. The reason Paul consults the lawyer is because he comes to doubt this prisoner could have killed the little girls. Yet Coffey was found with their broken bodies in his huge arms. And in Louisiana in the 1930s, a black man with such evidence against him is not likely to be acquitted by a jury. (We might indeed question whether a Louisiana Death Row in the 1930s would be so fair and hospitable to a convicted child molester, but the story carries its own conviction, and we go along with it.) There are several sequences of powerful emotion in the film. Some of them involve the grisly details of the death chamber, and the process by which the state makes sure that a condemned man will actually die (Harry Dean Stanton has an amusing cameo as a stand-in at a dress rehearsal with the electric chair). One execution is particularly gruesome and seen in some detail; the R rating is earned here, despite the film's generally benevolent tone. Other moments of great impact involve a tame mouse which Delacroix adopts, a violent struggle with Wharton (and his obscene attempts at rabble-rousing), and subplots involving the wives of Paul (Bonnie Hunt) and the warden (Patricia Clarkson).

But the center of the movie is the relationship between Paul and his huge prisoner Coffey. Without describing the supernatural mechanism that is involved, I can explain in Coffey's own words what he does with the suffering he encounters: "I just took it back, is all." How he does that and what the results are, all set up the film's ending--in which we are reminded of another execution some 2,000 years ago.

I have started to suspect that when we talk about "good acting" in the movies, we are really discussing two other things: good casting and the creation of characters we react to strongly. Much of a performance is created in the filmmaking itself, in photography and editing and the emotional cues of music. But an actor must have the technical and emotional mastery to embody a character and evoke him persuasively, and the film must give him a character worth portraying. Tom Hanks is our movie Everyman, and his Paul is able to win our sympathy with his level eyes and calm, decent voice. We get a real sense of his efficient staff, of the vile natures of Percy and Wharton, and of the goodness of Coffey--who is embodied by Duncan in a performance that is both acting and being.

The movie is a shade over three hours long. I appreciated the extra time, which allows us to feel the passage of prison months and years. Stephen King, sometimes dismissed as merely a best-seller, has in his best novels some of the power of Dickens, who created worlds that enveloped us and populated them with colorful, peculiar, sharply seen characters. King in his strongest work is a storyteller likely to survive as Dickens has, despite the sniffs of the litcrit establishment.

By taking the extra time, Darabont has made King's "The Green Mile" into a story which develops and unfolds, which has detail and space. The movie would have been much diminished at two hours--it would have been a series of episodes without context. As Darabont directs it, it tells a story with beginning, middle, end, vivid characters, humor, outrage and emotional release. Dickensian.

The movie The Green Mile, a fantasy drama, was released in 1999. Frank Darabont wrote and directed the movie titled the same as Stephen King's novel, published in 1996. The lead role is played by Tom Hanks, who portrays a death row prison guard during the Great Depression era. After the arrival of a mysterious convict (played by Michael Clarke Duncan), he witnesses a series of supernatural events that unfold at the facility. Additionally, supporting roles are played by Sam Rockwell, David Morse, Bonnie Hunt, and James Cromwell.

3a8082e126