{"id":11734,"date":"2020-07-27T19:20:12","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T18:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11734"},"modified":"2020-07-27T19:59:14","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T18:59:14","slug":"second-runner-up-maddy-fry-for-the-green-mile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11734","title":{"rendered":"Second Runner-Up: Maddy Fry for The Green Mile<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Judges’ Comments: <\/strong>The Green Mile<\/em>, Frank Darabont\u2019s epic 1999 adaptation of Stephen King\u2019s Death Row drama: the critic thought it a \u2018masterpiece\u2019 and argued \u2018passionately\u2019 in its favour. We also felt the reviewer \u2018shined a nicely ironic eye on the subject matter\u2019s outdated view on women and race, noting the imbalances but setting them in the context of time and place of the story in the Depression-era deep American South.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Green Mile<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>(dir. Frank Darabont, 1999): reviewed by Maddy Fry\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It can sometimes feel like Stephen King has written more books than he\u2019s read. Whether or not that\u2019s something to be proud of is debatable, and it undoubtedly shows in his later works. His 2006 outing, Lisey\u2019s Story<\/em>, had one Guardian critic claiming it \u201cgave me the creeps, for all the wrong reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s no denying The Green Mile<\/em>, his doorstopper from a decade prior, and the accompanying epic film, is a masterpiece. Although I\u2019d devoured the book in 2001, I was banned from watching the film due to it carrying an 18 certificate – my parents deemed the notorious botched execution scene too violent for a 12-year-old\u2019s tender gaze. It wasn\u2019t until Christmas 2019 that I finally got around to watching it. With no parentals in sight, I gleefully went back to it more than 5 times.<\/p>\n

Clocking in at 3 hours and 8 minutes, it\u2019s a bold and compelling depiction of pre-war Louisiana, where prison guards on the Green Mile, the last stop before the condemned meet their end, cling to their unpleasant vocation for fear of the Great Depression, while the inmates they guard cling to what only a charitable soul would call a life.<\/p>\n

Yet the enclosed world of Death Row turns out to be a less hellish place than we might think. Paul Edgecombe (played by Tom Hanks), the firm but fair head of the guards, sees his routine upended when a convict named John Coffey, an enormous black man accused of rape and murder, turns out to have magical healing powers. Doubts form among Edgecombe and his colleagues about whether Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) should ever have to face \u2018Old Sparky,\u2019 their grim nickname for the electric chair.<\/p>\n

Given the cruelty and bloodlust of Louisiana justice, it\u2019s a courageous move to make executioners likable and trustworthy. Paul Edgecombe, while no radical, is a decent and just purveyor of his duties. He deplores needless cruelty, has less prejudice towards non-whites than most of his contemporaries, is loyal to his colleagues and devoted to his wife. He\u2019s a boss most people would kill for. It\u2019s just unfortunate that so many people die on his watch.<\/p>\n

And yet, we stick with him. Maybe it\u2019s the Tom Hanks effect.<\/p>\n

The camaraderie between prisoners and guards is believable, and the odd moments of tenderness and regret shown by inmates Bitterbuck and Del just before meeting \u2018Old Sparky\u2019 make it hard not to feel empathy. There\u2019s no segregation, and the guards do their best to connect with the prisoners while sheltering them from any systemic abuse. When the time comes, they dispatch them quickly. It\u2019s not justice, but in some ways, it\u2019s more just than the world on the outside.<\/p>\n

The more problematic parts in today\u2019s world still stick out. Here as in The Shawshank Redemption<\/em>, director Frank Darabont\u2019s other masterwork, men find ordinary miracles in trying circumstances, discovering a gentler masculinity in the process \u2013 even if it leaves women thin on the ground.<\/p>\n

The women and black people in The Green Mile<\/em> exist to serve the needs of the white men, and Edgecombe\u2019s wife Janet\u2019s one moment of feistiness in the book is purged from the film. The morally dubious nature of capital punishment, and the fact that the Last Mile largely consists of inmates who are black, Cajun or Native American, isn\u2019t really explored. In fact, the film seems to imply that Death Row is only a problematic institution if an inmate turns out be a black super-Jesus \u2013 and killing him is counter-productive because of all the white people that might need saving.<\/p>\n

But the film\u2019s deep heart\u2019s core is more subtle than this. John Coffey takes the cancer he wrenches out of Melinda Moores, the warden\u2019s wife, and forces it into the body of sadistic prison guard Percy Wetmore, in a scene akin to rape (rather bold given what black men were so often accused of), who then turns and shoots the demented and vindictive William Wharton, a convict who turns out to be guilty in more ways than one. The bad guys get their comeuppance – but as the film repeatedly makes clear, justice isn\u2019t cheap, and the death of the bad doesn\u2019t always mean closure for the good. John Coffey still rides the lightening, and Paul Edgecombe is punished with near-eternal life for letting it happen. Despite being a film about the death penalty, in King\u2019s world the wages of sin are life, not death.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s crucial to realise that it\u2019s all Coffey\u2019s choice. There\u2019s no panicked Garden of Gethsemane moment in the face of his own violent demise. Rather, he expresses weariness with his calling, having to mend the consequences of people being \u2018ugly to each other.\u2019 The question left to torment the viewer is whether Coffey really did want his life to be over, or whether he just knew Edgecombe\u2019s promise to help him escape was an empty one. If you\u2019re a black man in 1930s southern America then to paraphrase Robert Frost, the best way through is out.<\/p>\n

Although the racial dynamics of the film are less self-aware than they could be, in many ways Coffey\u2019s skin colour is irrelevant; he is simply the man with all the gifts, including an uncomplicated desire to reward the good and punish the bad. Unlike almost everyone around him, he chooses his own end, while Paul Edgecombe has to be content with eking out his final years in a nursing home he loathes, unsure of when his death will come, but sure that his prolonged existence, shorn of his loved ones, is a post-humous punishment from Coffey for allowing \u2018a miracle of God\u2019 to be executed.<\/p>\n

Yet if Coffey\u2019s very existence is a divine mandate, leaving early could be law-breaking of the most profound kind \u2013 and as all the characters discover, the Green Mile is ultimately a place where you can check out, but never leave.<\/p>\n

I certainly haven\u2019t. You won\u2019t either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Judges’ Comments: The Green Mile, Frank Darabont\u2019s epic 1999 adaptation of Stephen King\u2019s Death Row drama: the critic thought it a \u2018masterpiece\u2019 and argued \u2018passionately\u2019 in its favour. We also felt the reviewer \u2018shined a nicely ironic eye on the subject matter\u2019s outdated view on women and race, noting the imbalances but setting them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":352,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[399],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nSecond Runner-Up: Maddy Fry for The Green Mile - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11734\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Second Runner-Up: Maddy Fry for The Green Mile - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"  Judges’ Comments: The Green Mile, Frank Darabont\u2019s epic 1999 adaptation of Stephen King\u2019s Death Row drama: the critic thought it a \u2018masterpiece\u2019 and argued \u2018passionately\u2019 in its favour. 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