GREEN MILE--- DEATH PENALTY REVISITED

Victor Bloom MD

"The Green Mile" is a movie that wrestles with serious controversy, with universal conflicts inherent in the human condition and with the dark side of human nature.

It is about good and evil; about the physical world and a spiritual world; about punishment and swiss replica watches redemption; about how some people are basically good and others deeply bad. At bottom the film attempts to show that the struggle between Jehovah and Satan is ongoing, never resolved. As this struggle is reflected in everyday life, some people are depicted as being cruel and destructive, others kind and healing.

The green mile is prison-speak for death row in Louisiana back in the

thirties, appropriately named for its antiseptically green floor. Tom Hanks is the kindhearted head guard who tries to run the death row like a doctor would run an intensive care ward. The prisoners are to be treated with the utmost of respect and consideration for their feelings and their person. Not only must he deal with one guard who is particularly cruel and sadistic, but he must also prepare for the arrival of two incoming death-row inmates, one a gigantic black man who was convicted for murdering two white girls, and another who is a wild and primitive Hannibel Lecter, evil incarnate.

Although the black man appears fearsome, he is actually child-like and exudes goodness of heart, ultimately manifesting amazing powers of healing. Tom Hanks begins to doubt that such a man could have murdered the two girls. The audience is faced with the reality that sometimes innocent men are executed in the electric chair. And in case anyone has any doubts that in our present sensibilities electrocution is cruel and unusual, there is a scene, giving the film an 'R' rating, that shows in graphic detail what can happen in an actual execution gone wrong. It is a scene of horror that

goes beyond what we have ever seen before on a silver screen. Still, it is a masterpiece of film making.

This motion picture is the strongest argument yet in recent movie history to dispense with the death penalty. Amongt the horrors of the execution scene were the witnesses, family and friends of the murdered girls, thirsting for revenge. An eye for an eye...

The film carries forward the message of "Dead Man Walking." In fact, this expression

is used liberally in the green mile, providing a connection with the earlier work. Apparently it has been a phrase in common use, another horror in and of itself.

The director, Darabont, was the same as in "The Shawshank Redemption," another prison film, again about the relationship between a black and a white, again about

an innocent person being convicted and imprisoned, and again taken from a novel by Stephen King.

While it is true that our criminal justice system is imperfect, especially so when an innocent man is convicted or a guilty man acquitted, the offense is critically greater when an innocent is executed because of the irreversible finality of death.

What gradually suffuses the film, forcing the audience to lose its bearings, is a mounting and pervasive occurrence of the supernatural or spiritual, which is

magical and mysterious and elicits deep responses in each viewer, which cry out for understanding. It is as if we live in a world where the devil inhabits some humans while others are healers with God-given talents.

There is a fascinating and loveable tame mouse in death row that

the prisoners, except for the evil prisoner and guard, come to love. The

beauty of the mouse is that it is a living creature which can scurry under

the prison bars, come and go, and still be faithful to one person. This little

subplot embodies the message that God loves the least of his creatures. Among

the least of his creatures, according to some theologicans, are death row inmates, including heinous murderers and rapists and the occasional innocent inhabitant of the green mile.

Roger Ebert, the famed movie critic, compared Stephen King to Charles

Dickens. Considering Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," complete with magical

trips to the past and future, revealing humanity's tendency toward good and

evil and the need for compassion and redemption, "The Green Mile" is a 20th

century echo of a 19th century theme, one that has evolved over the last

two millenia.

To quote Ebert:

"The movie is a shade over three hours long. I appreciated the extra time,

which allows us to feel the passage of prison months and years. Stephen

King, sometimes dismissed as merely a best-seller, has in his best novels

some of the power of Dickens, who created worlds that enveloped us, and

populated them with colorful, peculiar, sharply seen characters. King in

his strongest work is a storyteller likely to survive as Dickens has,

despite the sniffs of the litcrit establishment.

"By taking the extra time, Darabont has made King's "The Green Mile" into a

story that develops and unfolds, which has detail and space. The movie

would have been much diminished at two hours--- it would have been a series

of episodes without context. As Darabont directs it, it tells a story with

beginning, middle, end, vivid characters, humor, outrage and emotional

release. Dickensian."

Dr Bloom is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University School of Medicine. He is a member of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and on the editorial board of the Wayne County Medical Society. He welcomes comments at his email address--- vbloom@comcast.net