The Green Mile

viewed September 3, 2000 on VHS  Full Details

While staying in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (Amish Country, USA), my girl and I spent a cozy evening at our bed and breakfast room (E.J. Bowman House -- highly recommended) watching this movie, which the proprietor insisted on calling "The Long Green Mile".  Perhaps she was referring to the running time.  This film sure takes its time telling its story, which ranges from being utterly syrupy to utterly weird.  In between some scenes that pit people that are way too good (show me a Louisiana prison guard who's gentle with his inmates and I'll show you a dead prison guard) against people who are way too evil (though the guy who plays the nasty prison guard is a real find -- he takes a stereotypical bad man and makes your skin genuinely crawl), we get a seven-foot tall black guy grabbing a Tom Hanks' crotch in the midst of exploding light bulbs, and next thing you know Hanks can pee and screw like a new man.  I'm not sure if this is allegory, but if it is it's the kind you find only in America.  All-in-all, an amalgamation of the Christ passion with contemporary White guilt in a story that is alternately preposterous and engrossing, the two at times going hand in hand.  

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