In continuing with my silently agreed upon tradition with this community to watch films made when I was too young to understand them :), I watched The Green Mile, a film which was released in 1999 on Netflix.
I can see how some of the pictures used to advertise this film could send the wrong idea about what this film is about. I know it did for me.
I saw a huge Michael Clarke Duncan surrounded by what I assumed to be bad cops and I asked myself if I truly was ready to watch another one of those racially tense films on a night I was planning to unwind. So, I skipped this film a few times until Netflix released the cover with Tom Hanks mostly in view. That's when I had a rethink. Tom Hanks to me is mild and by that I mean an empathetic actor and reader for the audio books he reads, so I knew something has to be off about my initial assumptions. I discovered I was right after reading what Netflix had to say about it:
A real turning on it's head moment, so I began to watch. Michael Clarke plays the role of John Coffey, a man who had been caught crying by the bodies of two little girls who they assumed he'd murdered. It did not help that he was saying through tears that he couldn't help it. They obviously concluded he was a man with demons who could not help murdering people. This is how he found himself taken to be executed at Cold Mountain Penitentiary where Tom Hanks who played the role of a kind supervisor with a bladder infection welcomed him.
There were other officers who also doubled as friends to Tom Hanks who were nice to the people they had to execute. Well, all but a man called Percy Wetmore who only came to work here because he was a sadist and wanted to watch a man die on the chair. He also only got the position in the first place because of his connections to the Governor's wife-his aunt.
As Netflix says, an inmate is discovered to posses mysterious powers and you probably have guessed by now, that it was John Coffey. He had powers to heal of a bladder infection, remove a tumor and transfer to another person if he wished(something he did to the unlucky and mean Percy) and he felt the evil in the world so deeply, it made him tired. He was tired too because he was misunderstood. What is a black man doing in a white dominated world where he can't recall where he came from or how he got his powers?
The real dilemma though came when Tom Hanks and the other officers discovered that he did not actually murder the girls he's been accused it. It was the another convict, a man named William "Wild Bill" Wharton who was also slated to have his time on the chair. With no proof of this crime except the psychic discernment in one of the scenes where John Coffey had physical contact with Wild Bill and could see him commit the crimes he'd been accused of as plain as day, there was nothing else or no one to bring this matter to. Also, John had had enough and wanted out of this big, bad world, and his only final wish was to watch Top Hat which they obliged.
This film was emotional because of the kindness of this man who only wanted to help. He was pure in heart and the fine contrast between his physical stature and his cowering inner self made me want to protect him so much. I loved the tenderness shown towards a mouse that he helped resurrect and who apparently gets to live forever because of his powers, I loved how Percy got what he deserved in the end for his cruelty(he once purposefully refused to soak the sponge used to conduct electricity for one of the prisoners on death row, just to watch him fry). However it really asks the question, what would you do if you had that power over a man's life?
In this film, Tom Hanks does his best. I don't think he could blame himself for allowing an innocent man die because he said himself that he would have left the door wide open and allowed John walk as far as he wanted with no questions asked. But John made his choice to die and that had to be respected.
For me, this story is unusual and that's one thing I love about looking for old movies to watch. The time feels magical and the stories feel nostalgic.
10/10 for me.
Thanks for stopping by!