Yesterday I wrote about the movie "Sunset Limited." Today I'd like to write about another movie that deals with life and death but from a different perspective. In "The Green Mile" John Coffey is facing execution for a crime he did not commit. He is resigned to the fact that he is going to die; in fact, he tells prison guard Paul Whitcomb that he is ready to die because life is too painful. I don't know if Stephen King consciously intended Coffey to be a Christ figure but that is what he reminds me of.
Because this is a Stephen King story, you know there are going to be elements that just don't happen in real life, and Coffey's ability to heal is one of them. Coffey is one of those souls who take the world on their shoulders and feels everyone's pain. At the end, when he is about to be taken to the electric chair he and Whitcomb have a discussion about love, life, death and suffering. Coffey wants to die, is ready to die. He tells Whitcomb that the guards are really doing him a favor.
So, we have two men who both want to die. White from "Sunset Limited" and Coffey from "Green Mile." But they have very different reasons for doing so--or are their reasons all that different after all?
Once there was a Jewish peasant who somehow got the idea that the world was so messed up only his death could cure it. If that isn't the ultimate egotistical act, I am not sure what is. Where he got that idea I don't know because the idea of sacrificing even animals is so alien to the world I live in that it just does not make sense. Maybe it did back in his day, but it doesn't now. He talked a lot about his death. He was bound and determined to go to that cross and anyone who tried to talk him out of it, as Black tried to do with White in "Sunset Limited", well, "Get thee behind me, you Satan." Well, he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. A whole religion sprang up around that death. People in every century since (and there's been quite a few of them) have been obsessed with that death.
Why are we so obsessed with death? Jesus said the greatest love that anyone could show to someone else is laying down their life for them. Why is that so great? What good does someone else's dying do me? I don't want anyone to die for me, I want them to LIVE for me. What about LIVING for each other?
Because this is a Stephen King story, you know there are going to be elements that just don't happen in real life, and Coffey's ability to heal is one of them. Coffey is one of those souls who take the world on their shoulders and feels everyone's pain. At the end, when he is about to be taken to the electric chair he and Whitcomb have a discussion about love, life, death and suffering. Coffey wants to die, is ready to die. He tells Whitcomb that the guards are really doing him a favor.
So, we have two men who both want to die. White from "Sunset Limited" and Coffey from "Green Mile." But they have very different reasons for doing so--or are their reasons all that different after all?
Once there was a Jewish peasant who somehow got the idea that the world was so messed up only his death could cure it. If that isn't the ultimate egotistical act, I am not sure what is. Where he got that idea I don't know because the idea of sacrificing even animals is so alien to the world I live in that it just does not make sense. Maybe it did back in his day, but it doesn't now. He talked a lot about his death. He was bound and determined to go to that cross and anyone who tried to talk him out of it, as Black tried to do with White in "Sunset Limited", well, "Get thee behind me, you Satan." Well, he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. A whole religion sprang up around that death. People in every century since (and there's been quite a few of them) have been obsessed with that death.
Why are we so obsessed with death? Jesus said the greatest love that anyone could show to someone else is laying down their life for them. Why is that so great? What good does someone else's dying do me? I don't want anyone to die for me, I want them to LIVE for me. What about LIVING for each other?
