The Green Mile

~~Originally posted on July 9, 2017~~

I’m of the opinion that you can’t go wrong with a movie that has Tom Hanks on the cover – whether it’s Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, or The ‘Burbs – and that’s definitely true of the one Seth Dickey brought to our Thursday Night Movie Time this past week. The Green Mile (1999) was a collaboration between Director Frank Darabont and Stephen King. Five years earlier, the pair had brought The Shawshank Redemption to the screen, and this was their follow-up. Both films have a very similar tone. The main difference between the two is that Shawshank has a very subtle, biblical undertone, loosely based around the Old Testament story of Joseph, whereas The Green Mile has a plot that is overtly and undeniably based on the New Testament story of Jesus Christ. The Green Mile takes place down in Louisiana during the time of the Great Depression, and revolves primarily around the interaction between Tom Hanks’ character Paul Edgecomb – a death row prison guard, and his prisoner John Coffey – an extremely large black man (portrayed by the late Michael Clarke Duncan, may he rest in peace) who has been wrongly convicted of raping and murdering two young white girls. Throughout the course of the film we see that Coffey has a variety of supernatural abilities which include healing disease, prophecy, sensing the good and evil in other people, and even resurrecting a dead mouse. He also has a genuine concern for other people, including strangers, as well as a childlike sense of wonder. His conviction as a child rapist and murderer is based entirely on outward appearances and racism. We don’t even see the trial, because whatever trial he had was irrelevant – he’s an eight foot tall black man and a stranger – his guilt was assumed the moment they found him holding the dead bodies of these two little white girls. The reality is that he found them after they had already been killed, and was trying to heal them. This film doesn’t just touch lightly on an important issue – it presses firmly on a deep and open wound that our country is still grappling with today. And it does so by reminding us that the qualities which make someone a genuine child of God cannot be seen with the eyes. This is what Hanks’ character learns in the film. It’s what we, as a society, still have not learned. I give The Green Mile 4 Coffstars 🌠🌠🌠🌠, 3 Coff-tears, 2 Coff-cones, and 1 Mr. Jingles .