The Green Mile

***
Compelling, but questionable 26 Oct 2007

There is something compelling about setting a film which explores the resilience of the human condition in a prison, and many good movies have come of it. The most famous, and one which all too often is claimed to be someone's "favourite film", is The Shawshank Redemption, but there are of course countless other, and better examples. This epic (it runs at well over 3 hours) seems cast very much in Shawshank's mould, and it is a gripping narrative, but it is not without some major flaws.

The storyline, which is very simple and clearly signposted from the beginning, concerns the Death Row block in a prison in a Southern gaol which bears the nickname "The Green Mile". Its chief warder, Paul Edgecomb (played by Tom Hanks), is a man of good manners, grace and consideration, both to his colleagues and inmates, and the world over which he presides should be a happy one. However, this is a Hollywood movie, so of course he has a bladder infection and the nephew of the state governor's wife (played by Doug Hutchison) is a small-minded, almost psychopathic youth whose motivation for working on the Mile is to see people fry. So much, so predictable. The prisoners range from the silent and meaningful Native American Arlen Bitterbuck to the "problem child" Wild Bill Wharton (who neither really wild nor problematic at all, and would certainly not cause a hardened prison guard even the slightest concern), but the overwhelming impression is that these are "good guys" who did something stoopid and now have to pay for it all with their lives.

And then there is John Coffey, a character of true Stephen King vintage. This giant of a man (and he is played magnificently by Michael Clerk Duncan) is brought in convicted of the murder of two little girls, having been found cradling their blood-stained corpses in his arms. He, however, can barely string a sentence together, yet possesses magical healing powers which can restore health to both Tom Hanks (more's the pity) and a pet mouse (which out-acts Hanks for every second it's on screen).

So what does this film do well? As I have suggested above, it is a gripping narrative, and the slow pace never drags. Moreover, there are some excellent performances (if a little too much in the "dryly humorous good-natured Southerner" mould from the supporting cast (led by David Morse). The camera-work is at times imaginative, and the locations outside the prison are full of southern grandeur. There are even moments of wit, and the tear-jerking is kept to a minimum.

Unfortunately, there is an awful lot wrong with this film. Firstly, Hanks is ridiculously one-dimensional as a character, relying on the twinkle in his eye and good manners to get him in and out of any situation. Never once does he hint at human weakness (his tearful confession of doubt to his wife feels like an afterthought), and the effect of this is to turn the story in to a fairy-tale, which renders its moral value void. Moreover, there are points in the film when the direction degenerates into pure pantomime, such as during the execution of the loveable madman Eduard Delacroix). Simply put, the scene goes on far too long and turns what should have been a shocking, appalling act of cruelty into a ludicrous sequence of cliches and over-the-top acting. And while I do not wish to spoil the ending, it should be noted that the coda (in which Edgecomb reflects on his life since those dramatic events on the Green Mile) undoes all the good work of the movie to that point.

These flaws (and they are only a selection) are, however, subsidiary to the fundamental problem with the film, which is the assumptions about race that the viewer is invited to make in order to believe the premise of the story. In essence, it would be impossible to make this film the other way around, with black prison guards and an old white prisoner, because our cultural expectations of black people differ so markedly from those of European origin. Non-white people are, if this film is to be believed, mystical and mysterious, in touch with strange forces that lie beyond the bounds of science and rational inquiry, yet which return us to those origins which we had forgotten. The figure of the illiterate, retarded black giant (all bulging muscles, sinews and sweating skin) is only a step away from the much more unpleasant images of Uncle Tom that once were all too common in our culture. Time and space do not permit me to explore this idea further, but movies like this, with their comfortably reassuring reassertion that whites learn something from blacks but don't really get forced to change the social order in any significant way, do perhaps more harm than good.