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The Green Mile movie review
“We think of this place like an intensive care ward of a hospital.” So says Paul Edgecomb, who is in charge of Death Row in a Louisiana penitentiary during the Depression. Paul (Tom Hanks) is a nice man, probably nicer than your average Louisiana Death Row guard, and his staff is competent and humane–all except for the loathsome Percy, whose aunt is married to the governor, and who could have any state job he wants, but likes it here because “he wants to see one cook up close.” One day a new prisoner arrives. He is a gigantic black man, framed by the low-angle camera to loom over the guards and duck under doorways. This is John Coffey (“like the drink, only not spelled the same”), and he has been convicted of molesting and killing two little white girls. From the start it is clear he is not what he seems. He is afraid of the dark, for one thing. He is straightforward in shaking Paul’s hand–not like a man with anything to be ashamed of.
Source: https://www.rogerebert.com/
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The Green Mile movie analysis
Cognitive theory suggests debates over the notion of the unthinking response, a passive spectator whose emotional response is not only shaped, but directed by the filmmaker, suggesting the initial emotional response is impulsive due to how the text is constructed. The Green Mile uses the theme of death to manipulate a passive audience cognitively in feeling strong emotional responses throughout the film. The theme of death provokes a powerful emotional response as it classed as a primal fear that resonates with the audience, as they recognise at some point it will affect them. In the film, death acts as a sense of finality to the characters and could be seen as an easy technique to force an emotional response in the audience.
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The green mile was a notable movie to me. It contained many dramatic scenes. However, it was not my favorite.
John Coffey was a pure definition of an innocent and kind-hearted human who was unjustly convicted of a horrific crime. Not only this but also he had some kind of special gift. And the reason he was bitterly hated by the people without any official evidence was that he was a black man and at that time people were much more racist. Although John Coffey was a gigantic person, his behavior and character reminded me of a child.
The story is written by Stephen King which I surmise was obvious if you were familiar with his style.
When I watched The Green Mile over 2 decades ago, I was fascinated by the story. However, this genre of movies, i.e. fantasy mixed with drama, cannot excite me anymore. These days, I prefer either thoroughly fantasy or purely drama-driven movies. I guess the director, Frank Darabont, was trying to make a duplicate of his former masterpiece, Shawshank Redemption, with pretty similar plot in the same setting, i.e. prison, and the same writer, Stephen King.
Although the characters, even the villains, were playing their parts extraordinarily, The Green Mile failed to impress me sufficiently. This is mostly because of the story, which is too staged. Every character is like a piece of the puzzle perfectly fitting in to the adjacent one. This is not something you expect to see in real life. The end part of the movie was the worst when the protagonist acted by Tom Hanks and even the little mouse are sentenced to immortality as a punishment. What was the mouse’s fault? To me, the film was too long (over 3 hours) and rather boring, and I had to fast-forward many scenes.
I could also find a contradiction in the plot where Paul explained to the old lady by the end of the film that he had been cursed to immortality for doing nothing wrong. Join Coffey himself had no complaint about his conviction and was pleased to depart this world. My logic tells me that John could never curse Paul, let alone the little mouse simply by holding Paul’s hands or the entire mouse for a moment.
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