The Green Mile Review

In March of 2001, I received a paperback copy of The Green Mile, a late-1990s novel by Stephen King which had originally been published as a 19th Century style "serial" novel.  Instead of giving readers the whole book in one volume, King and his publisher released a chapter or so on a regular basis (every six weeks or so, I believe), echoing the publshing tradition of Charles Dickens' time in which huge works such as David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities were published in monthly installments.

I had made a conscious effort not to buy The Green Mile in its original serialized format; at the time I was barely working and didn't have any of the Internet's "work at home" opportunities, so I had to be extremely choosy about what King books to buy and which ones to avoid. 

I also was then very much "into" Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels and many of the Star Wars "Expanded Universe" writers, so for me  going to the mall and buying more books by good old "Steve-O" wasn't very high on my "must get" list.

But eventually one of my online friends, the one with whom I'd had the closest relationship up to that time, decided to give me a copy of the movie tie-in edition as a birthday present.  She had wrapped it nicely and wrote a nice little note along the lines of I hope you enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed the movie.

For some reason I've never understood, I've only read the first few pages; it's not that I don't like Stephen King nor did I mean to be an ingrate who didn't appreciate the gift from that particular friend.  I just have never been able to take the book and simply lose myself in it as I would normally do with a Stephen King novel.

The Green Mile and the "Frank Darabont streak"

Lately I seem to be on a "Frank Darabont/Stephen King" kick; since early September I've gotten around to buying 2007's The Mist and 1994's The Shawshank Redemption, which is somewhat thematically linked to Darabont's 1999 adaptation of The Green Mile.  

I guess sometimes the past just catches up with you, whether you want it to or not.

I've never been much of a big fan of movies set in prison; most of them always deal with guys (and sometimes women) who are steamrollered into incarceration for either a petty crime that merits a lighter sentence, are guilty but somehow sympathetic, or innocent but imprisoned because of a glaring flaw in the justice system.

They also almost always have prison movie cliches, such as cruel wardens, sadistic guards, and even more sadistic fellow prisoners who victimize the nicer con who's usually the star of the movie.

And yet, while both The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile also contain their fair share of these cliches, it's a credit to both King the novelist and Darabont the adapter that they are compensated for by a good story, an elegant - some would say "overly slick" - presentation, and good acting by the entire cast.

The movie's ensemble is led, of course, by Tom Hanks, who plays the key role of Paul Edgecomb (whose older "frame story" incarnation is played by Dabbs Greer), a high ranking guard at Cold Mountain State Prison in Louisiana during the Great Depression. Like Morgan Freeman's Red in The Shawshank Redemption, Paul is the link between us, the viewers, and the various men - both good and evil - who encounter John Coffey (Micharl Clarke Duncan), a huge mountain of a man who has been falsely accused of killing two girls in rural Louisiana.

Of course, when we first see Coffey clutching the tiny corpses of the dead girls and him crying that he couldn't "take it back" we understand why the angry mob of white men, including the bereaved father (William Sadler) and everyone else think the gentle black giant did it.

The only one who instinctively realizes that maybe all's not kosher in the Coffey case is Paul, who is afflicted with a urinary infection just before John arrives at Death Row, where Edgecomb is the chief guard. John Coffey (pronounced like the drink but spelled differently) is quiet, shy, and almost childlike in demeanor; as big as he is, he's even afraid of the dark.

The other guards are mostly good, decent fellows, particularly the bulky Brutus "Brutal" Howell (David Morse), Dean Stanton (Barry Pepper), and Harry Terwilliger (Jeffrey DeMunn). They're not naive, Kumbaya-singing jailers, mind you, but they're fair-minded and even treat their condemned charges humanely by 1930s standards.

The rare exception is Percy Wetmore (Doug Hutchinson), a snotty, callous, and immature fellow who owes his job to family connections and not any innate talent or skill. Ambitious and cruel, Percy is planning to move on to another state government job....but not before he participates in an execution. He gets off on abusing the prisoners both physically and mentally, taking out his pent up rage on men and mouse alike.

If you've seen The Green Mile, you are no doubt familiar with Mr. Jingles, a mouse that somehow becomes the pet of Eduard "Del" Delacroix (Michael Jeter), one of the cons who has a date with Old Sparky. He has, of course, no lines of dialogue, but he plays a huge role in the story's development and its transformation from standard prison drama to fantasy/allegory/King paranormal stuff story.

Unlike The Shawshank Redemption, which is mostly plausible, The Green Mile delves into King's well-trod territory of fantasy/horror, though most of the supernatural stuff is of the good magic kind, and all of the horror comes from either the dark side of humanity - racism, man's inhumanity to man, and pettiness - or the various ways some of the characters die in the story.

Though sometimes dark and depressing - my mom almost gave up on it until Paul's urinary infection was taken away -The Green Mile is essentially a story about miracles. John Coffey is a realistic archetype of a black man being railroaded to an unjust end by a racist Southern culture, and at the same time he could be seen as something more. Whether King and Darabont deliberately want the viewer to make the connection between the gentle but doomed Coffey and a greater power, I'm not sure. I'm just saying that there are many ways that the film's fantasy elements can be interpreted.

The only qualm I have about The Green Mile is that the very qualities that make it a standout film almost overwhelm it. It's very nicely shot by David Tatersall, who also was the cinematographer for all three of the Star Wars prequels directed by George Lucas, but it's done in the same stately fashion used in The Shawshank Redemption. Doesn't bother me much, but it might annoy viewers who like a more dymanic "moving picture."