Only
one film provoked the British public to repeal the death penalty
-- 10 Rillington Place (1971). Several films
have tried to shake up the American public in a similar manner,
most recently Dead Man Walking (1996) and True
Crime (1999). Now director Frank Darabont ups
the ante in The Green Mile, based on the novel
by Stephen King. The setting is the death row of Coal Mountain
Prison in Louisiana during 1935; the supervisor, Paul Edgecomb
(played by Tom Hanks), has several assistants. The floor of
the aisle between the cells is painted green, so the last
walk of those condemned to death, from their cell to the room
with the electric chair, is known as the "green mile." Edgecomb's
philosophy is to ensure that the last days or years of the
men on death row are as calm and even as happy as possible.
Only two characters in the film are portrayed as malicious
-- Percy Wetmore (played by Doug Hutchison), who has used
political connections to work on death row, and William "Wild
Bill" Wharton (played by Sam Rockwell), a psychopathic killer.
All the rest in the film are portrayed as sensitive human
beings. For example, Edgecomb has nonspecific urethritis,
and men in the audience who have had this malady may notably
wince as he urinates "razor blades." The wife of the prison
warden, Hal Moores, (played by James Cromwell) has an inoperable
brain tumor. To humanize the victims, we follow their idiosyncrasies.
Eduard Delacroix (played by Michael Jeter) revels in finding
Mr. Jingles, a mouse that can fetch a threadless spool. John
Coffey (played by Michael Clarke Duncan) is a 315-pount giant
whose gentleness belies his murder conviction, but he has
a special gift -- the power to heal. Because Duncan heals
Edgecomb's urethritis and restores to life Mr. Jingles after
Wetmore cruelly steps on the pet mouse, Edgecomb arranges
to have Coffey heal the prison warden's wife. In due course
we learn that Coffey was framed for a murder actually committed
by Wharton. On three occasions we see the procedure involved
in administering death by electrocution, a witnessed event
in which certain words are spoken, restraints are attached
to the victim, and levers are pulled. Although the execution
of Arlen Bitterbuck (a Native American played by Graham Greene)
is disgusting enough, Wetmore insists on handling the execution
of Delacroix; in so doing, he deliberately refuses to place
the customary wet sponge on his head to ensure immediate contact
between the electricity and the brain, and what we see is
so horrifying that anyone who can bear to watch the long spectacle
of electric volts and fire, based on two recent Florida executions
that prompted Supreme Court litigation to declare the electric
chair cruel and unusual punishment, would surely want to write
their governor to commute every planned execution until the
barbaric practice ceases. The third execution is of Coffey.
Knowing that he is innocent of the crime, he has something
to say when asked for final words. It is at this point that
we grasp the analogy of the quintessential victim of the death
penalty of all time -- someone who performed miracles, who
was condemned of something that he did not do, and who forgave
those whose interpersonal relations are based on hate rather
than love. While the death row prison guards carry out their
assignment to electrocute Coffey, tears fall on more than
one cheek. Afterward, Wetmore is committed to a mental institution,
and the rest of the death row employees transfer to other
prison assignments. Shortly after the film was released, Florida
decided to abandon the electric chair, thus making the Supreme
Court case moot, but the death penalty will continue -- by
lethal injection in the manner portrayed in Dead Man
Walking. As the most eloquent plea to end the death
penalty yet filmed, the Political Film Society has nominated
The Green Mile for an award for meritoriously raising
political consciousness of the need to advance human rights.
MH
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