I hadn’t seen The Green Mile before, but YouTube just keeps releasing old movies to watch, free with ads, and so I’ve been catching up on all those classics I missed back in the day.
I keep getting this movie mixed up with The Shawshank Redemption, another movie about someone sentenced to prison for murders they did not commit. I guess it was a thing at the time.
The film opens with a scene of the father of two missing girls leading a search party in the forest and coming across Duncan’s John Coffey (like the drink, but spelled differently) cradling the two girls, dead and covered in blood, crying and repeating, “I couldn’t take it back, I couldn’t take it back.”
Condemned to death, he is sent to death row, the “green mile”, to await execution.
Tom Hanks plays Paul Edgecomb, the guard in charge of the Green Mile and the one who performs the executions when the condemned’s D.O.E. — date of execution — arrives. He is suffering from a bladder infection at the start of the film; Coffey heals him. He then goes on to perform several more miracles — healing, prophesizing, even bringing the dead back to life, convincing the guards that he has a divine power and is an agent of God in the world.
I realized then that this movie was telling the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, but this time, from the Roman guard’s point of view. There’s a last supper (meat loaf, with some of that cornbread Hanks’ missus makes), forgiveness, a “they know not what they do” moment, and even a chance for Coffey to be set free, which he refuses. The people are locked in their roles, and Coffey, a divinely innocent man, must die for our sins.
The normal picture used for talking about The Green Mile features Tom Hanks looking serious, with Michael Clarke Duncan somewhere small. But once I understood what story the movie was really telling, it became really hard not to see the clues everywhere — Coffey with a halo during one of the movie’s last scenes really couldn’t have made it any more clear.
The movie is stuffed with other great performances; David Morse as guard Brutal/Brutus (but this time he does not betray), Harry Dean Stanton as a carefree trustee, the chameleon-like Sam Rockwell as “Wild Bill” (is there a role he cannot lose himself in?), Gary Sinise in the Herod role as a racist defense attorney, James Cromwell as the warden, Bonnie Hunt as Hanks’ wife.
As a movie, it’s a little thin. Given substantial proof that Wild Bill, who happened to be working for the father of the slain girls at the time of the murder, and then went on to kill again, was the real murderer, Hanks, the warden and his fellow guards never raise the possibility of asking for a new trial. Coffey must die an innocent man, and that’s all there is to it.
Hanks, in a framing story, becomes a sort of Lazarus, wandering through a vastly extended life and telling Coffey’s story to unbelievers. I guess that’s the best that Coffey could have expected.
The Green Mile is often described as a tear jerker, but I was just a little mad at the injustice of it all. Especially people who chose duty and submission over the right thing.
Pratt? His innocence would have made him a decent choice for Coffey. But I feel if he’d played Hanks’ Edgecomb, he would have freed Coffey, no matter the cost, and become his first disciple.
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