Back in my college days, my girlfriend (now wife) and I would go out to the movies constantly. This was pre-Netflix, but even so, I’m glad we were the last generation that HAD to go out to theatres to actually watch new movies. It was a great education.
That was a long time ago, and there are many fine movies I have never seen. I decided to remedy that fact in a tiny way by watching The Green Mile, which came out nearly a quarter-century ago, and yet this was my first viewing.
I enjoyed it (although it was, at over three hours, much longer than most films), but while I was watching it, I couldn’t help but be struck with the Forrest Gump/Green Mile parallels. I haven’t even bothered looking, and I’m sure this has probably been discussed to death for decades, but my own first impression revealed to me these connections:
- In both movies, Tom Hanks’ character is a decent, sweet-natured man from the south…….
- ……..who encounters a large black man, also from the south, with whom he forms an important relationship……….
- ………and who also meets a man, in movie movies played by Gary Sinise, who is in a senior position to his own……..
- ……and, in both movies, there is something quite mystical happening (in the case of Forrest Gump, an impossibly improbably encounter with many historical and societal inflection points, and in Green Mile, the supernatural abilities of John Coffey to feel the pains of the world around him and be able to excise evil and expel it).
- The crap southern accents (see end of post)
I must say, as a Star Trek: Original Series fan, I was thinking to myself, yo, Stephen King, did you get the inspiration for this novel from The Empath? Because in that episode, a woman with mystical powers is able to voluntarily “port” the pain, illness, and injury from another person and take it upon herself, before dispensing it externally, albeit at great emotional and physical cost during the process.
Anyway, it isn’t often I have the luxury of just laying in bed and watching a three hour movie, but I’m glad I did.
I do have ONE beef with this movie, however. It is something that it also has in common with Forrest Gump, and it is: the absolutely off-the-mark southern accents.
I grew up in the south. I love southern accents. I even re-acquire mine if I hang out here long enough. And the southern accent is, to my ears, feminine and alluring. I don’t know what hack coach they got to train them on vocals, but I think they unearthed Jimmy Durante and had him serve as vocal coach. Take it from a native Cajun: if you are saying the words “girls“, it is not pronounced “GOILS.” Maybe if you’re from Yonkers. Not if you’re at Angola State Prison in Louisiana. GOILS is what Chicago gangsters from the 1920s said. In the entirety of Green Mile, any word with “ir” in it had “oi”; as a substitute. Absolutely distracting.
It’s almost as bad as Sally Fields’ accent in Forrest Gump, where apparently she was told to speak like Elmer Fudd. (i.e. “I’m dyin’, Fowwest.”). Get it right, you Hollywood know-nothings.
