A beautifully made but completely pointless and depressing film

You kind of have a point there. What was the use of making Paul live to be over 100 if he wasn't going to stay young and healthy, and have all his friends and his wife kick the bucket before he did, and pretty much have nothing to look forward to anymore?

I often forget about the outer narration of the story, since the majority of it focuses on the inner narrative about the younger Paul Edgecomb and his days at Cold Mountain. That's the one part about John Coffey that didn't make much sense. How was it supposed to be a good thing for John to do that to him?

Funny, I actually thought that Shawshank was pointless and depressing. Prison setting (rarely anything outside of that), disturbing suicide scene, rape scene, cruel warden. The happy ending didn't compensate how dreary it was. At least this film had a intriguing story line (fantasy elements and a "twist").

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I feel bad for SkepticalBaby and everyone around him, he's put so much work into his post but it was all for naught.

It's all a deep end.

The tagline for this movie is "Paul Edgecomb didn't believe in Miracles, until the day he met one".

I find this to be the ultimate premise for the movie. yes it's set during the depression and lots of bad stuff happens in this movie, but for a man who has been working on death row for a long time who saw the worst of humanity, saw something good and amazing in the most unexpected place. This movie is about miracles, the super natural and the possibilities, it's about the goodness and innocence of people and about responsibility of owning such a gift.

John Coffey's life was quite a sad one and in the book they actually try to get John Coffey off the charge of Murder.

I find this movie quite sad, but also uplifting. That even though there is so much cruelness and bad things happening in this world, amazing things can still happen.

This is what I got from the film.

I'm sorry but i don't think that the sadness of a film could make it pointless . Yes i agree with you , there is such pain in this movie , but for me it is full of ideas and meanings . First , this film is a way to militate against the death penalty that was so used in many countries at 90s . So the goal of showing all those "good" prisonners ( whom we are so attached during the movie ) dying on this chair with such an awful way , is to prove that the system is wrong : People don't deserve to be killed no matter what they have done , there is always this moment when we regret all the bad things we made and prison is good-enough to make a human feel this regret . Now let's talk about the aim of including John coffee in this movie , wich is the answer of this question : " what will happen if we could feel all this pain and this hate that exist between people in our world " and according to our coffee , we will not be able to live anymore , there is a scene when Paul ( tom hanks) wants to give coffe another chance even if he will risk to lose his job . But guess what , john prefer the death because he cant handle all this pain he receive from the world . So this role wasnt just about making people aware about magic , god or whatever. After I finished watching this movie , there was one and only question inside my head : " why John cofee made Paul live all this longtime " and i also can find 2 possible answers for that . The first one is like a punishment to Paul for all the innocent people whom he command their executions , but it seems not credible since our john all he does was helping people not punish them . So , that made me search for this second answer : i think that he find Paul the right person to take care of the mouse and as we can see at the end , the mouse live peacefuly in his own "Mouseville". Finally , i hope that my respond will be useful for you and i'm sorry for my bad english haha .

Not all movies end with a happy ending. Sometimes the Hero doesn't win. John did effect many people during that short time. He was able to not only heal people, but gave comfort and hope to others. There was more people that were affected by John's gifts than Tom Hank's character. Those people, while sad at his death will have that positive change.

Truly bad guys were punished because of him, and good people were given a second chance, or perhaps just hope for the future. It is sad to lose John at the end, but they still have the gift of his kindness.

Even though Tom Hank's character has to live longer than any of his loved ones, doesn't mean he had a miserable life.

I also think the long life might also be part of the Jesus Metaphor. Isn't part of the mythology that the Roman that finally killed Jesus was cursed with immortality?

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I'm not a huge fan of The Green Mile, I like it but it's not one I want to watch over and over. The point to me was about good and evil in the world. The duality of man and the direction some choose to go.