KAIST HSS217 Fantasy Film 수업 중간 에세이 (2020)

Why is Green Mile a Fantasy film

I didn’t watch lots of fantasy movies before attending this class; my interest was in comedy films and drama. Therefore, when I got the assignment and wanted to find a fantasy film that is not ‘obviously’ fantasy (like Greek Tales, epic, or fantasy adventure), it was not so easy. After several digressions (like ‘Time Bandits’, a witty comedic film but obviously looking a childhood dream fantasy), I met this thrilling 3-hour film that passed like an arrow, with a simple slow plot that culminated to a sorrowful ending and an unexpected twist about the speaker’s age. If it was before attending this lecture, I would have stopped the essay here and acclaimed this film a dark but heartwarming humanity fiction. But the concepts of the lecture gave an insight to analysis why this film — which looks like a mixture of human drama and fantasy, or crudely speaking, not belonging to any genre from before — is a very dark fantasy.

Ahead of other facts – that John Coffey looks like a pure soul who can’t hurt nobody, the Good allies and Evildoers are completely distinguishable, or that the story lies in a time long ago from the speaker and has inspirations of conflict and cruelty (which is visible from the speaking of John’s former attorney) from that historical background – the protagonist Paul (the prison guard) goes on a journey to a world of magical powers and become changed. This theme was not so visual because Paul didn’t seem to want something, neither gets a call to adventure, didn’t have the step of reluctance to adventure (believes in the magic right after he’s cured), and the liminal place doesn’t seem to visually exist. But after the whole appreciation, I think the secondary world was John himself.

This film is different from fairytales. Film’s keystone is John changing lives of inmates and warders by magic, but instead of stopping as a ‘friendship and protagonist’s leadership making change to a dull society’-kind of fantasy, John is a living being and hates his power which reads all cruelness in the mind of people he meet. He eventually dies by Paul’s hands. Also, besides his friendship with Paul, his way of giving heartwarming change (or judgement) to people do not use Paul (except when Paul makes John cure Del’s wife), so his miracle looks more like Jesus than a fairytale hero. But when accepting that John is the secondary world himself, we can see why this film is a fantasy.

Paul does not receive a call to adventure. The world, John, comes into Paul’s ordinary world by an inevitable execution of law (external force). As a trained prison guard Paul behaves nice to all inmates without voicing out racial prejudice. He also seems to sympathize ‘simple minded fellow’ who doesn’t look like he can hurt a bug – which later pointed out by John’s former attorney: “You came up here to see if I think he did it (murder) at all.” – and these factors combined made him accept John’s request to come closer though he was the only one left as a warder (so he can’t ask help to anybody). This is the cross to first threshold because he is forced to believe John’s magic immediately as his disease vanish.

The later part of “Hero’s Journey” comes more obvious. The second threshold is making John cure Hal’s wife, which needs every guard (except tied-up Percy)’s belief that John would not make any trouble (the easy one) and Hal would eventually agree John to meet his wife (the hard one, which is a gamble). The inmost cave is them all believing in John and his power, and becomes able to use it in good way.

The ordeal of the journey happens when Paul seems to think of letting John free to go (because he believes in John), which means he is ready to fight the law system he is now in by violating it. But he listens to John, who is tired “of bein’ on the road, … not ever having me a buddy to be with, … of people being ugly to each other” and the magic giving pain; this might be the reason John proceeded his execution, not because he’s a coward, but he’s knowing miracle can’t last here forever… and it’s his way of caring John by letting him pass away.

But this is not a happy ending, which is visually punctuated by lights going dark right in the moment of execution, although John’s last wish was to not put him in the dark. He also gets a curse, a lasting life waiting for visit of death, and quit his job just after execution of John (“couldn’t do it anymore after that”), which can be translated as his primary world (ordinary life) is ruined. Still it’s a journey that grows everyone — gives Paul and Brutal a new perspective, gives Del hope by saving his rat — and as the curse can also be seen as something he got from the adventure (from John), not exactly an elixir, but like a token.

Then what is the theme of this film? I think the theme is how should we treat other people, and how little helping can lead to big magics. Fantasy has ability to “process reality through recovery and… provide shape to our real-world experience” — and this film also has the ability. As the antagonist — racism and prejudice — leads the unjust justice system to force Paul to kill John, this makes me think what miracle could have we killed by our biased view in the real world.

Since Paul and his workmates was kind to John with no prejudice from his looking simple-minded and race, they could become John’s last friends and face magic inside him, and also completes his last wish of seeing a movie. The theme of magic becomes the goodwill and mutual thankfulness, urge to help someone who helped me, that can make our lives different. The magic is not as a cool dream, but as a warm bond between people.

Why is John depicted as a giant and inarticulate man?

• Him being simple-minded leads him to not question about the reason of his power in the real world, therefore separating real world and himself easily. Green Mile is not a high fantasy, but as thinking John as the secondary world, it is easily distinguishable between “the primary world of the reader and the secondary world that the author creates” — John is the only one who doesn’t surprise at magical powers at the first place, and the magic goes back to mystery as John dies, therefore making the power self-contained.

• It is used in a plot to make him not use the power for his own good, eventually making himself suffer from hatred and accept the death sentence rather than fighting from it.

• How about his height? One of the best fantasy movies, King Kong (1933), “had a lasting impact on the popular imagination and is notable for its success in employing special effects to create fantastic creatures”. Our film had many similarities with it, which makes viewers think about dehumanizing cruelty people had on people/creature that was considered inferior at that timeline. Emphasizing his size is as important as drawing Kong a massive giant in King Kong, because it makes viewers know he is the key to the adventure ready to start, and as being a ‘monster’, himself is the iconography of fantasy.

Why is the speaker at nursery, not being a narration by Paul himself at 1935?

I feel it’s to be more dramatic and it makes sure the two worlds are separated. Since all magics are coming out of old Paul’s testimony, nobody can say ’the story is 100% true!’ (like the Life of Pi or Secondhand Lions). The listener on the primary world of film can sympathize him or back him up, but cannot fully believe the magic unless he has really witnessed a clear evidence. So the fantastical world stays inside the testimony. Also since the timelines are separated for more than 60 years, it makes not only us, but also the listener at the nursing home to see the story full of inspiration from the past.