I

The Green Miles

Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) and Michael Clarke Duncan (John Coffey)

Science Fiction, Drama, Fantasy

1999

3 hours and 8 minutes

II

The Green Mile is a 1999 film, directed by Frank Darabont, based on the Stephen King novel The
Green Mile. The film stars Tom Hanks as Paul Edgecomb and Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey. The
movie is primarily about Paul Edgecomb and his life as a prison guard on the death row. The movie is
told in flashback by Paul Edgecomb in a nursing home and follows a string of supernatural and
metaphysical events upon the arrival of tried and convicted murderer John Coffey.

The main theme of this movie was about a man who was going to die by the electric chair for
a crime he had not committed. This related to death and dying because John Coffey must deal with
the fact that he was going to die for a crime he had not committed. The story follows John Coffey, a
large, black inmate convicted of raping and murdering two young white girls, and the other two inmates
on death row, along with the guards who watch over them. Coffey is special, as Paul discovers, and he
has magical healing abilities that become apparent. He befriends a small white mouse, who he names
Mr. Jingles, and heals the mouse when the brutal guard Percy Wetmore tried to kill it. He also heals
Paul's kidney infection, and later, Paul spirits him out of the prison to heal the warden's wife's brain
tumor. Coffey "transfers" this brain disease to Wetmore, the sadistic guard who the inmates and staff
dislike. Wetmore never recovers and spends the rest of his life in a mental institution.

III

I found this movie The Green Mile as an introspective film. It causes us to reflect, to ponder
the choices we’ve made, to wonder which ones will have the longest lasting repercussions. It’s a movie
about death—the fear of it, the release of it. But it’s still a prison movie. And the prison movie, over
many decades of cinema, has become a genre in itself.
The Green Mile’s power is not just in its tear-jerking-sequences, but in themes it leaves you
with. In a society that has popularized phrases like “No regrets,” and “I wouldn’t change a thing,” here
we find a man who has seen everyone else in his world die, it shows here the protagonist’s instrument
in dealing with moral choices or the protagonist his rational part of the soul to reckon the situations
without easily giving in to the push and pull of the various desires.
Additionally, this seems to resonate with Aristotelian ethics, the protagonist virtuous character
always find a way to stay intact even in dire times, he did not compromise the dictates of reason in
exchange for the immediate fulfilment of his passions.
 III

For me, the type of screenplay ending that the movie presented should be goes like this,
Melinda is saved from brain cancer. John Coffey punishes Percy (for sabotaging Del's
execution) and Wild Bill (for raping and murdering two little girls) by putting Melinda's cancer
stuff into Percy, making Percy shoot Wild Bill and leaving Percy as a vegetable. John gets
electrocuted, even though he is innocent. When he touches Paul Edgcombe's hand to show him
what Wild Bill had done, some of John's power transferred to Paul. Some of John's power also
passed into Mr. Jingles, Del's mouse. Back in the present day, Paul Edgecombe and Mr. Jingles
are still alive. Paul is 108, and has had to see all of his loved ones die over the years. The film
ends with Paul waiting (and wishing) for death.