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The Green Mile WALK To DEATH |
After what seemed to be an unending
delay, the critically 
accalimed
The Green Mile based on Stephen King’s novel, will finally hit the
Mumbai screens. The film directed by Frank Darabont, boasts of award-winning
performances by Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan...
Set on Death Row in a Southern prison
in 1935, The Green Mile is the story of a cell block’s head-guard,
who develops a poignant, unusual relationship with an inmate, who possesses
a magical gift that is both mysterious and miraculous.
The film begins with a flashback, narrated by Paul Edgecomb to his friend.
Edgecomb is now living in an old-age home, some six decades after working
as the head-guard on Death Row, at Cold Mountain Penitentiary. Edgecomb’s
duty at Cold Mountain, in the Depression-era, South, included a watch
over a quartet of killers awaiting their final walk down `the Green Mile’,
the stretch of green linoleum flooring that took convicts from their jail
cells to the electric chair.
Over the years, Edgecomb walked the mile with a variety of convicts. But
there was one convict John Coffey, who he would always remember. A massive
black man, convicted of brutally killing a pair of nine-year-old sisters.
Coffey certainly had the size and strength to kill anyone, but his demeanour
starkly contrasted with his appearance. Beyond his simple, naive nature
and a deathly fear of the dark, Coffey seemed to possess a prodigious,
supernatural gift. This leads Edgecomb to question whether Coffey was
truly guilty of murdering the two girls. As he goes about unearthing facts,
Edgecomb learns that, sometimes, miracles happen in the most unexpected
places....
Filmmaker Frank Darabont was hooked on The Green Mile after reading the
first of six installments of Stephen King’s novel. The best-selling
author released the story in a serialised form, over a period of six months,
between April and September, 1996. The format thrilled readers, who took
each of the six chapters to the top of the paperback best-seller list
during the course of the year. When the sixth and final chapter (subtitled
‘Coffey On The Mile’) hit bookstores, King achieved a rare triumph
— all six installments of The Green Mile appeared simultaneously
on the Publisher’s Weekly national best-seller list.
King admits that the story was very difficult for him to write. Two years
before he began working on the novel in 1995, he had outlined a story
involving the electric chair and a black inmate named Luke Coffey, a magician
whose secret powers could possibly be used to make himself disappear before
walking the Mile. The author wanted to explore the possibility of a man
on a Death Row, who may be innocent, and who is able to help some of his
fellow captives.
Prior to the publication of the books in 1996, director Darabont knew
that King had embarked on this new assignment. The idea of the story sounded
fantastic to Darabont, who’s a die-hard King fan.
Darabont’s earlier film The Shawshank Redemption, won nominations
(in addition to the Oscar nod) from the Writers Guild and Directors Guild,
as well as winning the Humanitas Award and the Scriptor Award from the
University of Southern California. And King knew he could do justice to
The Green Mile, since earlier too Darabont had made a film based on King’s
novel, The Woman In The Room. Says Darabont, “When (Stephen) spoke
of the relationship between John Coffey and the head of Death Row, it
certainly piqued my interest.
Like Shawshank..., this story is uplifting, but this has a much more complex
tone. I’m looking for something that is hopeful, and that’s
what I find attractive in these stories. I want something my heart can
believe in.”
CASTING
Darabont and Tom Hanks first met in 1994 at the Academy Awards nominees’
luncheon, which Hanks was attending on behalf of his nomination for Forrest
Gump, and Darabont was representing rival nominee The Shawshank Redemption.
Hanks was already impressed by Shawshank.... Recalls he, “For that
to be somebody’s first movie is a miraculous achievement. And I liked
his sensibilities.” So when Darabont offered Hanks the role of Paul
Edgecomb, he willingly agreed to do it. “I’m usually a great
stickler for turning things down because I don’t understand why the
(characters) are doing what they’re doing. With Paul Edgecomb, the
logic is perfect.”
King too was keen that Hanks portray his story’s narrator. In fact
the author says he had Hanks in mind when he wrote his prison saga. “Tom
fits like an old shoe. The minute that Frank mentioned his name to me,
I thought, this can’t be, it’s too good to be true,” King
says.
About his character, Hanks says, “Paul’s job is to keep things
quiet and calm on the Green Mile, until the moment comes when he takes
a human being and, as officially as possible, shepherds him from this
place into the hereafter. But Paul can’t deny the fact that John
Coffey is not your standard inmate on Death Row. It shakes Paul’s
confidence in his own ability to carry out his job.”
The other key character, of the huge black man John Coffey, is played
Michael Clarke Duncan. Says Duncan, “John Coffey is one of the biggest
men that anybody has ever seen. He’s seven feet tall and 330 lbs,
an apparent cold-blooded murderer, with two dead girls in his arms. But
John Coffey is also a very special individual who understands Paul, sees
the kindness that is in Paul and most of the other guards. And that’s
kind of the ironic twist to it.”
For Duncan, playing the central role was certainly a dream come true.
“I’m used to being the big tough guy, the bodyguard type,”
the actor says, “I had never taken on a role like this. I started
reading the novel and couldn’t put it down. Once I finished it, I
said, ‘That’s me. I don’t care what I have to do, but I’ve
got to play this role’.”
Darabont decided on Clarke because he wanted a fresh face opposite a seasoned
actor like Hanks, to make the contrast obvious. The director was sure
that Clarke would be catapulted to instant fame with this role, and he
was, even bagging an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
RE-LIVING THE DEPRESSION ERA
Since the film is a period piece, attention had to be paid to set designing
and costumes. The cell block, which forms the backdrop for almost the
entire film, was built, starting from a scratch, by art director Terence
Marsh. For shooting on real locations, the now-shuttered Tennessee State
Penitentiary, was used. Darabont had previously considered this site for
The Shawshank Redemption, but eventually opted for another location.
Talking about the sets, Marsh says, “We tried to give our set a sense
of space. A sense of history. And a sense of mystery. We chose the elongated
cathedral-like windows because there is a very mystical element in this
movie, a supernatural element, which we didn’t have in ...Shawshank.
It presented us with lots of opportunities.” Marsh’s set also
contained another grim reminder of the story’s eerie atmosphere —
a spooky replica of a mahogany-and-copper electric chair fashioned from
an amalgam of electric chairs he researched at New York’s Sing Sing,
plus prisons in Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and Georgia. Marsh and his
art directors borrowed characteristics from each, to create their own
unique instrument of death, building three separate chairs for the film.
“It’s pretty horrible, the whole idea of getting executed, let
alone elecrocuted,” says Marsh, “What we used is interesting
and quite scary, but not based on one particular chair. King described
it very well in the book.”
The clothes were designed after doing a research and studying the Depression-era
photography. What the research showed was that in 1935, most prisons did
not have uniforms except for Sing Sing in the U.S., while most prison
guards wore either suits or khaki pants and shirts.
With all the effort put in, the film sure comes across as an outstanding
work of art, and one which helps understand the finer nuances of human
relations.
Compiled By Salma Khatib