The Green Mile

USA 1999

Reviewed by Rob White

Synopsis

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

In a US retirement home in the present, elderly Paul Edgecomb reminisces to his friend Elaine.

Flashbacks reveal events in 1935: Edgecomb is a death-row warder in a southern state prison. He takes custody of John Coffey, convicted of murdering two little girls. Another warder, Percy Wetmore, who treats the prisoners sadistically but is protected by powerful allies, asks to take part in the next execution. One day, Coffey calls over Edgecomb, who is afflicted by a urinary complaint, and heals him by touch. Afterwards Coffey breathes out a stream of tiny 'insects'. Later, Percy deliberately bungles an execution so the prisoner dies a horrible death.

Edgecomb and the other warders sneak Coffey out of the prison during which the drugged prisoner 'Wild Bill' is briefly roused and grasps Coffey as he's led past. They take Coffey to the prison governor's house where he heals the governor's terminally ill wife. Coffey holds the insects in and breathes them into Percy's mouth back at the prison. In a trance, Percy shoots Bill. Taking Edgecomb's hand, Coffey lets Edgecomb 'see' what he had found out when Bill touched him: Bill was the real killer of the murdered girls whom Coffey, when he was found, was trying to heal. Coffey is executed. In the present, Edgecomb tells Elaine Coffey's healing greatly extended his life span: he's now 108.

Review

Near the beginning of The Green Mile - adapted by Frank Darabont, the director of The Shawshank Redemption, from Stephen King's serialised novel - the ageing protagonist Paul Edgecomb is watching Fred Astaire sing 'Cheek to Cheek' in Top Hat (1935). The most joyful of Irving Berlin songs ("Heaven, I'm in heaven..."), it makes him weep uncontrollably, forcing him to run out of the retirement-home television room. Where does his sorrow come from? The rest of the film unravels the answer to this as Edgecomb recalls several weeks in 1935 when he worked as a death-row warder and met telepath and healer John Coffey, convicted of murdering two young girls. The bond between them is at the heart of both book and film.

Often King's God-fearing middle-aged protagonists are blandly stolid representatives of God-fearing middle-American decency. Here, unexpectedly, we see the Mom-and-apple-pie virtue which Tom Hanks so often personifies demystified: Edgecomb first benefits from then exploits his prisoner's power. He can continue with his professional duties towards Coffey in these circumstances only because he's capable of moral evasion, taking advantage of Coffey's powers without sufficiently repaying the debt he owes.

In fact, there are all sorts of hidden costs in the film's moral accounting. Coffey, played remarkably by Michael Clarke Duncan (whose few previous roles have mostly been bit-parts as bouncers or bodyguards), is black and enormous. His body, covered with the scars from numerous beatings, is fetishised as a kind of primal physicality. He's illiterate and, until being imprisoned, itinerant. (In one location scene the economic conditions of the time are sketched in by a sign reading, "No jobs here: transients turn back." King's novel is clearly influenced by John Steinbeck's Depression-era fiction.) Though Coffey is The Green Mile's most sympathetic figure, he's concocted more than any other character out of a bundle of folkloric stereotypes whose origins in bigotry don't seem entirely acknowledged. A prisoner eats a Sambo chocolate bar. The leader of the search party (lynch mob) sent after the two missing girls spits in Coffey's face. His own lawyer compares "negroes" to violent mongrel dogs. The language of the prison - "boy", "boss" and so forth - is also the language of racist contempt.

In another way, however, "boy" is right. Coffey's childlike quality is emphasised: he's afraid of the dark; when he's briefly released under supervision to attend the wife of the prison governor he takes intense pleasure in the sight of stars and the feel of wet leaves. Yet his acts of healing are depicted as almost sexual. To cure Edgecomb's urinary complaint he grasps Edgecomb's groin. To draw out the cancer in the governor's wife, and then pour it forth again into a sadistic warder, he must kiss them. The poignancy in this mock sexuality comes from Coffey's insufferable loneliness. "I want it to be over and done with," he says. "Tired of all the pain, like pieces of glass in my head."

On being touched by a fellow prisoner, Coffey perceives all the prisoner's murderousness. Coffey is an innocent forced to become aware of and be implicated in atrocious acts - like the child in The Sixth Sense (and other cursed telepaths in King's work and elsewhere). Both of these mainstream genre films belong to that strange branch of mass entertainment that is more than melodrama, and dwells on extremely traumatised protagonists who can expect little relief. What makes such films so interesting is that, for all their formulas, they never let go of their melancholy premises. The Green Mile is suffused with Coffey's deep and terrible grief at what he sees around him, and Edgecomb's guilty proximity to this grief. Watching Astaire reminds him that, in the end, he could do nothing or would do nothing for Coffey except arrange for him to watch Top Hat in the prison. Coffey watched in rapture, but for Edgecomb, so many years later, it's unbearable - just as a great deal else is unbearable. He's a very old, broken man hoping to die before he has to witness the deaths of more loved ones. How many blockbusters deal with that kind of grief?

Credits

Director
Frank Darabont
Producers
David Valdes
Frank Darabont
Screenplay
Frank Darabont
Based on the novel by
Stephen King
Director of Photography
David Tattersall
Editor
Richard Francis-Bruce
Production Designer
Terence Marsh
Music
Thomas Newman
©CR Films, LLC
Production Companies
Castle Rock Entertainment presents a Dark Woods production
Production Co-ordinators
Carrie Durose
North Carolina:
Joanne Porzio
Unit Production Manager
L. Dean Jones Jr
Location Managers
Tennessee Crew:
Mark Ragland
Present Day Sequences:
Edwin Dennis
Post-production Supervisor
Christy Dimmig
2nd Unit Director
Charles Gibson
Assistant Directors
Alan B. Curtiss
David Bernstein
Jonathan Watson
Basti Van der Woude
2nd Unit:
Liz Ryan
Present Day Sequences:
L. Dean Jones Jr
Sean Hobin
Jules Kovisars
Script Supervisors
Susan Malerstein-Watkins
2nd Unit:
Connie Papineau
Present Day Sequences:
Dea Cantú
Casting
Mali Finn
Associates:
Emily Schweber
Maureen Whalen
ADR Voice:
Barbara Harris
Director of Photography
Present Day Sequences:
Gabriel Beristain
2nd Unit Director of Photography
Mark Vargo
Camera Operators
David Emmerichs
Tennessee Crew:
Robert LaBonge
Present Day Sequences:
Randy Nolen
Steadicam
David Emmerichs
Visual Effects Supervisor
Charles Gibson
Visual Effects
Industrial Light & Magic
Visual Effects Supervisor:
Ellen Poon
Visual Effects Producer:
Stephanie Hornish
CG Supervisors:
Carl Frederick
Tom Rosseter
Digital Artists:
Pat Conran
Jiri Jacknowitz
Jodie Maier
Khatsho Orfali
Bob Powell
David Weitzberg
Film/Editorial:
Kenneth Smith
Visual Effects Production:
David Valentin
Visual Effects
POP Film & Animation
Visual Effects Supervisor:
David Sosalla
Executive Producer:
Joe Gareri
Digital Effects Associate Producer:
Tom Clary
Digital Effects Compositors:
Michael Degtjarewsky
Lawrence Littleton
Tom Lamb
Visual Effects
Rhythm & Hues
Visual Effects Supervisor:
Chad Merriam
Executive Producer:
Bill Kroyer
Lighting Supervisor:
Eileen Jensen
2D Supervisor:
Betsy Paterson
Animators:
Brian Dowrick
Nancy Kato
Lighting Artist:
John Dietz
3D Matte Paintings
Matte World Digital
Visual Effects Supervisor:
Craig Barron
Visual Effects Producer:
Krystyna Demkowicz
Chief Digital Matte Artist:
Chris Evans
Digital Matte Artist:
Brett Northcutt
Digital Composite Supervisor:
Paul Rivera
Digital Compositor:
Todd R. Smith
Digital Compositor/Animation:
Mike Root
Special Effects Co-ordinator
Darrell D. Pritchett
Special Effects
Corey Pritchett
Puppeteers
Hiroshi Ikeuchi
Marc Irvin
Luke Khanlian
Louis Kiss
Scott Patton
Assembly Editor
Alan Edward Bell
Supervising Art Director
William Cruse
Set Designers
Donald Woodruff
Dianne Wager
Set Decorators
Michael Seirton
Present Day Sequences:
Natali Pope
Storyboard Artist
Peter Von Sholly
Costume Designer
Karyn Wagner
Costume Supervisors
Paula Kaatz
Present Day Sequences:
Gilda Texter
Make-up
Key Artist:
Lois Burwell
Present Day Sequences, Key Artist:
John Elliott
Artist:
Deborah LaMia Denaver
Special Make-up Effects
KNB EFX Group Inc
Supervisors:
Greg Nicotero
Howard Berger
Sculptors:
Garrett Immel
Mark Maitre
Gino Crognale
Co-ordinator:
Chiz Hasegawa
Key Hairstylists
Nina Paskowitz
Present Day Sequences:
Katherine Rees
Hairstylist
Janis Clark
Titles/Opticals
Buena Vista Imaging
Orchestrations
Thomas Pasatieri
Music Editor
Bill Bernstein
Music Scoring Mixer
Dennis Sands
Music Scoring Recordists
David Marquette
Tom Hardisty
Music Consultant
Arlene Fishbach
Soundtrack
"Charmaine" by Lew Pollack, Erno Rapee, performed by (1) Mantovani, (2) Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians; "Old Alabama" by Alan Lomax, performed by B.B. and Group; "Stardust" by Mitchell Parish, Hoagy Carmichael, performed by Eddy Howard; "Three Little Words" by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, performed by Duke Ellington; "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (and Dream Your Troubles Away)" by Ted Koehler, Billy Moll, Harry Barris, performed by Eddy Howard; "Cheek to Cheek" by Irving Berlin, performed by Fred Astaire; "Old Fashioned Love" by James P. Johnson, Cecil Mack, performed by Eddy Howard; "I Can't Give You Anything But Love", "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking" by Jimmy McHugh, Dorothy Fields, performed by Billie Holiday
Sound Design
Eric Lindeman
Sound Mixers
Willie D. Burton
Present Day Sequences:
Richard Goodman
Re-recording Mixers
Robert J. Litt
Elliot Tyson
Michael Herbick
Recordists
Marsha Sorce
Kevin Webb
Supervising Sound Editor
Mark Mangini
Sound Editors
Howell Gibbens
Dave Stone
Supervising Dialogue Editor
Julia Evershade
Special Sound Effects
John P.
Ken Johnson
ADR
Recordist:
Rick Canelli
Mixer:
Thomas J. O'Connell
Supervising Editor:
Julia Evershade
Foley
Supervisor:
Aaron Glascock
Artists:
John B. Roesch
Hilda Hodges
Recordist:
Carolyn Tapp
Mixer:
Mary Jo Lang
Editor:
Solange Schwalbe
Stunt Co-ordinator/Animals
Boone Narr
Stunt Co-ordinator
Jeff Imada
Mr Jingles Provided by
Boone's Animals For Hollywood
Animal Trainers
Betty Linn
Carrie Simpson
Mule Wrangler
Tennessee Crew:
Malcolm L. Jessup
Film Extract
Top Hat (1935)
Cast
Tom Hanks
Paul Edgecomb
David Morse
Brutus 'Brutal' Howell
Bonnie Hunt
Jan Edgecomb
James Cromwell
Warden Hal Moores
Michael Clarke Duncan
John Coffey
Michael Jeter
Eduard 'Del' Delacroix
Graham Greene
Arlen Bitterbuck
Sam Rockwell
William 'Wild Bill' Wharton
Doug Hutchison
Percy Wetmore
Barry Pepper
Dean Stanton
Patricia Clarkson
Melinda Moores
Jeffrey Demunn
Harry Terwilliger
Harry Dean Stanton
Toot-Toot
Dabbs Greer
old Paul Edgecomb
Eve Brent
Elaine Connelly
William Sadler
Klaus Detterick
Gary Sinise
Burt Hammersmith
Mack C. Miles
Orderly Hector
Rai Tasco
man in nursing home
Edrie Warner
lady in nursing home
Paula Malcomson
Marjorie Detterick
Christopher Ives
Howie Detterick
Evanne Drucker
Kathe Detterick
Bailey Drucker
Cora Detterick
Brian Libby
Sheriff McGee
Brent Briscoe
Bill Dodge
Bill McKinney
Jack Van Hay
Rachel Singer
Cynthia Hammersmith
Scotty Leavenworth
Hammersmith's son
Katelyn Leavenworth
Hammersmith's daughter
Bill Gratton
Earl the plumber
Dee Croxton
woman at Del's execution
Rebecca Klingler
wife at Del's execution
Gary Imhoff
husband at Del's execution
Van Epperson
police officer
Reverend David E. Browning
reverend at funeral
Certificate
tbc
Distributor
United International Pictures (UK) Ltd
tbc feet
tbc minutes
Dolby digital/Digital DTS sound/SDDS
Colour/Prints by Technicolor
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011