by Curtis Edmonds -- blueduck@hsbr.org
She asked me what kind of movies I liked, and I couldn't answer. "All sorts of movies," would have been true, but it wouldn't have been an answer. Say "action movies" and she'll think you're just some typical guy who would drag her to Jean Claude Van Damme kickboxer movies. Say "science fiction movies" and she'll think you're a member of the geekhood, some sort of inane loser who can't match his socks. Saying "Quentin Tarantino movies" or, God help you, "Jackie Chan movies" wouldn't help matters on that front, either. "Independent movies?" Please.
It's not any better to go the other way, either. Say "gushy romantic movies", and there's not telling what she'll think of that, probably not anything good. (I think I ended up saying something about how I didn't see a lot of foreign movies, and changing the conversation to how good Being John Malkovich was.)
Of course, at that time, I hadn't seen The Green Mile. I wish I had. That way, I'd have a ready-made answer: "I like movies like The Green Mile." And I liked The Green Mile for... oh, well, for several reasons.
* I like movies with Gary Sinise in them. Nitpickers will point out that Sinise is in The Green Mile for only a moment, and his performance is hardly the most stirring in the picture. Fine. I like Gary Sinise. I especially like it when he hooks up with Tom Hanks. The Green Mile isn't quite in the same neighborhood as Forrest Gump or Apollo 13, but the caliber of acting is just as high.
And, you know, when you think about it, there are a lot of actors in this movie who have the same high acting ethic as Sinise. Consider the work of David Morse and James Cromwell, two talented actors who have spent a lot of time lately playing heavies. They're both here in second-banana roles, as a prison guard and a prison warden, respectively. Fortunately, instead of playing the bad guy, both Morse and Cromwell get roles where their inner decency gets to shine through. It's fun to see tough-guy actors play vulnerable for a bit -- the same tough-but-vulnerable style that makes Sinise such a great actor. (Hanks, of course, has perfected tough-but-vulnerable, and gets another shot at playing Henry Fonda here. And the lumbering, humongous Michael Duncan has the archetypical tough-but-vulnerable role as inmate John Coffey.)
* I like movies with realistic Bad Guys in them. I'm sure you've noticed that, lately, every Bad Guy in the movies is some kind of supergenius. This trend reached its culmination not too long ago with Con Air, featuring an all-star cast of supersmart crooks. (Perhaps, given the recent advances in law enforcement, you have to be pretty smart to get away with crimes.)
But evil wears a thousand faces, and the supergenius villain is just one. One of the things I liked about The Green Mile is how we get to see a lot of those faces.
You'd expect to see a lot of facets of evil in a prison movie, anyway. Most of The Green Mile takes place in Cellblock E of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as the "green mile" partially because of the green linoleum floors and partially because it's the death row, the "last mile" before execution. It's not a homelike place, but it's not a brutal, evil place, either. (Morse's character is nicknamed "Brutal", but that's just irony.) The guards have the attitude that the death house is more of a long-term intensive care ward, and are treated well in return by the prisoners. Graham Greene plays a silent-but-proud inmate. Harry Dean Stanton shuffles through the movie as a prison trusty. Michael Jeter makes a strong impression as a pathetic, broken-down Cajun lifer. (Jeter usually annoys me a great deal, but it's nice to see him in a good role.)
The banality of evil is illustrated by Sam Rockwell as new prisoner "Wild Bill" So and So. Rockwell gets to chew up nearly as much scenery here as he did as the red-shirted crew member in Galaxy Quest. His antics liven up the soggy midpart of the movie -- especially when he gets into a pissing contest with the guards -- but one believes that, if he stays on the Green Mile long enough, that he'll get just as broken-down as the rest of the cellblock.
But the real evil inside the prison walls isn't in a cell. The real bad guy on the Green Mile is a guard, one Percy Wetmore (Doug Hutchison). Percy, you see, just happens to be the Governor's nephew, which means in Depression Louisiana that he can get away with about pretty much anything he pleases. He is vain, petulant, and casually cruel, both to the inmates and to his fellow guards. Not only does Percy have the best personality in the movie, it is he -- far more than Hanks's bland prison guard or the inarticulate John Coffey -- that keeps the motor of the movie humming along during its three-hour length. It's his character that shows the true subtle face of evil. Percy manages to commit the most evil act of the year in movies, but even this act is subtle and understated. More than anything else, The Green Mile reminds us that evil isn't always over-the-top.
* I like smart storytelling. Finally, the best thing about The Green Mile is the story. Frank Darabont pulls off another bravura performance in his second adaptation of a Stephen King prison novel.
The Green Mile is nowhere near the movie that The Shawshank Redemption was, of course, and it would be unfair to make such comparisons anyway were they not inevitable. (My theory is that Shawshank is rooted much more strongly in the problems of the heart and the triumph of the spirit than The Green Mile, with its emphasis on the supernatural, can be.) What both films share, though, is a great story expertly told. Shawshank is a better story, but it depends on one shattering moment that changes our perception about the movie. The Green Mile is the lesser tale, but it is told more artistically, with the story threads carefully stacked up one by one.
My boss does these three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles, and she brought one into the office the other day that was a representation of Mount Rushmore. The puzzle is just some irregularly shaped pieces of cardboard, none of which look like much of anything. Instead of locking together, these pieces stack one on top of the other, and a shape forms around the contours of the edges. The Green Mile is built in much the same way. One piece stacks on top of another piece with artistic precision. And even if you think you know what piece is next, there are lots of other pieces that have to be put in place first -- with the final result looking quite different than what you might expect at first glance. Instead of one big surprise, The Green Mile has lots of little surprises that add up in time. (The original novel, as you may recollect, was published in serial form, which could account for the Dickensian structure of the screenplay.)
Of course, there are things I didn't like about The Green Mile (namely, the bookend structure of the beginning and ending which apes the structure of Saving Private Ryan) and things that I liked, but not well enough to include in the review (the Barry Pepper performance, let's say, as long as we're on the topic of Saving Private Ryan). There will be things about the movie that, should you see it, you will like more than the things I have enumerated here. And that, finally, is the best recommendation I can give for The Green Mile. If this is the kind of movie you like, you should go and discover its good points for yourself.
-- Curtis Edmonds blueduck@hsbr.org
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