|
|
|
|
 |
|||
|
|
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
| ||||||||||||
|
|
The Green Mile Review by
David Luty
In
a stately Louisiana prison circa 1935, head prison guard Paul Edgcomb (Tom
Hanks) lords over the institution’s death row with a kind, compassionate
heart. Working alongside his faithful, equally benevolent underlings (handily
played by David Morse, Barry Pepper, and Jeffrey DeMunn), Edgcomb is accustomed
to dealing with the perpetrators of the worst sorts of violence, so it isn’t
very unusual when John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), convicted of raping and
murdering two little girls, is led into his ward in chains. What’s unusual is,
first and foremost, Coffey’s hulking size, and more noticeably, a complete
lack of any apparent of malice in the innocent man-child. And that’s not even
mentioning the supernatural powers. The
considerable merits of a movie like The Green Mile can be measured by the
fact that it may not be until you leave the theater when you realize it isn’t
really about anything. Or to put it more accurately, it isn’t about
anything other than its own resolute insistence that it’s about nearly everything,
or at the very least, that it’s about nothing less than the most important
things going, things like life, love, old age, death, the mystery of a higher
power, and so forth. Those are relatively large things, it must be said, and
while it’s incredibly easy and dependable to pull from our culture of feelings
the handy lip service that points to such facets of life as we humans know it,
it’s a far different story to actually make significant comment upon them.
Therein lies the rub with much that constitutes middlebrow entertainment in our
American culture. Storytellers have gained lots of fame and dough over the years
simply by casting a sentimental eye towards such heady subject matter, without
necessarily having much in the way to say. Not there’s anything wrong with
that - storytellers have also made lots of audience members happy that way. The
best at this game, folks like Frank Capra or Steven Spielberg, get away with it
through the sheer force of their talent, their ability to find those iconic
images and moments that make a fiercely strong primal connection to their
audience. Director Frank Darabont clearly wishes to be included in that company,
and at this point, he isn’t too far removed. But
he isn’t there yet, and part of the reason may be his present attachment to
adapting Steven King prison stories for the screen. King has some inherent
limitations as an artist - he can be an exceptional storyteller, but when he
abandons his creepy sensibilities in favor of the weepy route, the over-reliance
on flatly good and evil characters to drive the plot contributes creaks to the
storytelling. Or to put it another way, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is
always about a good man fighting a corrupting system, while The Shawshank
Redemption is rarely about anything more than good men fighting evil men. At
least The Shawshank Redemption attempted to say something, about the
soul-deadening effects of incarceration and the soul-sustaining power of hope.
If it couldn’t begin to flesh out such themes without a grossly over-the-top
villain commandeering the story, the beauty of its production and the strength
of its performances almost rendered such foundational weaknesses invisible. The
Green Mile
has even less meat on its bones, though once again, Darabont has mounted an
extremely handsome production with some fine acting at its core. But the same
weaknesses echo from Shawshank - a stunningly simplistic view of humans
as either all good or all bad (the death row prisoners, not surprisingly, are
clearly demarcated between lines of good and bad, with most, even less
surprisingly, being of the angelic variety), and a villain of almost cartoonish
evil dominating the story. Like any good melodramatist, which Darabont clearly
is (as is King), he seems to care most about setting up these easily defined
statues of good and bad, and in making sure that good triumphs. That sometimes
results in an unhealthy fixation on the bad, unhealthy if you’re of the
feeling that this idea - that the greater the evil, the more satisfying its
toppling - is not always necessarily true. That idea is pretty much a truism in
action-adventure and horror flicks (which certainly helps explain King’s
reliance on it), but in what is ostensibly a human drama, it usually helps to
make sure your story is dealing with fleshed-out humanity. Darabont and King
relish attention over their over-the-top villains – young, whippersnapper
prison guard Percy Wetmore (Doug Hutchison), an absolute sadist at heart, and
the secondary antagonist, slimy madman prisoner Wild Bill (a maniacally focused
Sam Rockwell), are the most vividly drawn characters of the film. The paragons
of virtue, on the other hand, are woefully under-nourished, and it’s a great
credit to the charms of Hanks and Duncan (who are, in fact, the main characters
of the story) that they register as strongly as they do. Much
has been made of the film’s destructive over-length, but pacing is not a
difficulty for Darabont - the only problem with the three-hour running time is
the way it more fully illuminates the story’s thinness. Darabont is
accomplished enough at what he does to keep the film engrossing enough for such
a prodigious length, by effectively utilizing the emotionally spurring elements
of the medium to keep the audience connected - a warm spray of music (provided
by pro composer Thomas Newman); the slow zoom in on a face or sympathy and/or
wonder; and the deliberate but controlled way in which he allows situations and
relationships, some of which are perfectly engrossing, to unfold. Heck, he even
creates an involving relationship between the death row denizens and a
surprisingly talented mouse. It’s less important that Darabont uses such
techniques: what’s vital is that
he knows not to over-use them. The Green Mile, just as Shawshank,
teeters on the edge of schmaltz throughout its length, but Darabont rarely loses
his balance. What’s ultimately disappointing about the movie is that when all
is said and done, very little has been said or done. Leave it to Darabont to
film one of the most gruesomely staged electric chair executions ever, and yet
place it in a story that has absolutely no interest in making a statement on the
practice. You have to tip your hat to Darabont, however, because it’s more
than likely, and even somewhat understandable, that most folks won’t care. Contents | Features | Reviews
| Books | Archives | Store |
|
|
