OT -- The movie "The Green Mile"

[Bullard4075]

Most times I watch a movie , just to enjoy, caring little what the moviemaker wants me to think about.
But in this movie I am stumped as to the reason Percy Wetmore lost his mind following the encounter
with John Koffee (sp). Was it that there was no good in him to fill the void after the "bad stuff" left him
or something else? Your thoughts.

[mescalero1]

I think he was just a lost empty soul to begin with, when the bad left, there was just an empty shell.

[don Tomás]

Been a while since I watched the movie, but if I remember, John Coffey never expels the brain tumor/"evil" he sucks out of the warden's wife. He "gives" it to Percy who then goes postal on Wild Bill. Maybe?

[Tycer]

John Coffey never expels the brain tumor/"evil" he sucks out of the warden's wife. He "gives" it Percy.

Yep.

[Bullard4075]

I'll have to go look again but didn't the "bad" fly out of Percy ?
What made him go insane ?

A friend says he couldn't handle the bad (of Wild Bill) that he got from John Kofee but I think he
was bad enough already that the additional bad would not have made a difference.

[20cows]

Never saw that one, what made the mile green?

[Tycer]

was called the "Green Mile" because the condemned prisoners walking to their execution are said to be walking "the last mile"; here it is on a stretch of green linoleum to the electric chair.

[C. Cash]

The movie was also adapted from a very popular Stephen King novel.

[Hillbilly]

Being based on a S King novel, you have to allow for a lot of allegory to make the story work. Percy is a person who seems to be corrupt and evil from the start. Being a bit "souless" he becomes a "throwaway" to punish Wild Bill.

Several literary people have noted the John Coffee would loosely represent part of the Jesus story... as an allegorical character, of course.

Thats the fun thing about books.... they can mean whatever you want them to mean sometimes.

[FWiedner]

The way I followed the story, John Coffee was a healer who "took back" the pain and sickness of life unto himself.

Percy Wetmore was sick in the sense that he was a sadist. He derived pleasure from watching the helpless suffer and inflicting pain. He wanted to watch someone die, that's why he took the job on the Green Mile. He was openly impulsive and uninhibited about the fact.

John Coffee absorbed some portion of the Billy the Kid's sick memory when Billy grabbed him earlier, and the memories that John Coffee had shared with Tom Hanks along with the stuff from the sickness/tumor taken from the Warden's wife which caused her to become profane and lose control of her emotions, was force fed to Percy.

Percy was a sadist not in control of his emotions, and in the throes of the combined desire for revenge against Billy for the earlier attack and John's "help" he experienced the only grief at human suffering that he had ever felt. His impulsive character drove him to act out against Billy. When John's treatment of Percy took hold and his personal sickness was expelled from his body, and since Percy was all about pain and suffering, everything that was Percy was expelled.

His "cheese done slid off his cracker", as the gentleman said.

I think.

[marlinman93]

Hey you guys didn't pay attention to the movie! Remember he said his name was John Coffey, "like the drink only spelled different!"

[Bullard4075]

Don't think they ever, actually spelled his name in the movie did they?

[marlinman93]

No they didn't, but he did say it wasn't spelled "coffee". "Like coffee, but spelled different".
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120689/fullcredits

[mescalero1]

20 cows,
Go see the movie, either go alone, or go on a windy day, so you can say you got something in your eye.
I cried, and I am pretty cold.