The Green Mile & The Death Penalty

Don't forget to sign this petition to abolish death penalty: http://www.worldcoalition.org/Petition.html

My grade for the movie "The Green Mile": an overall 9.5/10... I just don't manage to see any flaw in this movie!

A big thing in my life is movies! I am a movie fan and I watch about anything I can... but somehow (I'm really not sure how), I had never seen "The Green Mile".  Well this is now a thing done.

What can I say about this movie? I think what will most depict my feelings is the first sentence I pronounced right after the movie was over:
"This has to be one of the best movie I have seen in a while."

Of course I am sure most of you know this already and the fact that it scores 8.4/10 and is certified fresh on www.rottentomatoes.com probably makes this post redundant, but I really do think that it is important to keep on praising good movies even after 12 years, just as a reminder to all the crap that comes out lately, that it IS definitely possible to make absolutely amazing movies.

Frank Darabont, also known for the Shawshank Redemption, the Mist or more recently Walking Dead, is not the most famous director in Hollywood but he is definitely one of the best!
Each of his movies or TV shows is definitely a delight and it is definitely a shame that George Lucas did not take his ideas into account to make Indy 4 (a subject which I definitely should bash on one of these days).

Darabont knows how to alternate cruelty and gentleness and although he really pushes his audience to the limit of the tolerable (the electric chair scenes made me turn around), he knows how to follow them with a sweet heart calming view. This delicate balance is very hard to achieve and is what makes the movie so good... Although the adaptation of a Stephen King's novel, the film never falls into the "horror - blood, violence and scream" genre. It makes you reflect on life, death, evil and good and especially on the right that humans think they have to judge and condemn their fellow humans.


This last point brings me to a more cold and unfortunately real subject, the death penalty.

So many times through the movie did I think:
"How can anyone wish for the death penalty?"
"How come humans are too stupid to realize that what they do to murderers makes them become murderers themselves?"
"Under the name of justice, how many innocent men have died?",
"What gives us the right, still under the name of said justice, to judge other beings and condemn them to their death?"
and most of all "What is the limit? What is the threshold that defines justice and revenge, punishment and murder?"

So many questions on which I have pondered for many years... I just don't understand it... I don't understand how a country like the United States of America, which often is viewed by its citizens as the best country in the world, how, say I, can a country so young and technologically advanced, so in advance compared to the rest of the world, be so mentally backwards when it comes to the death penalty? I don't know... it's a mystery...

Here I am giving a link to some frightful numbers...  http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf .

Read for yourself, it's completely legit and as you can see on it, 38 people were killed this year. It also clearly shows, unlike what many defenders of the death penalty says, that it is not at all cheap to put somebody to death (yes a few BILLIONS $ could be saved and used elsewhere if the country were to stop their death penalty policy).

In reality, death penalty is a cruel, backwards, retarded view of justice. It doesn't help anything, except maybe the primal instinct of revenge. It doesn't save money, it doesn't decrease criminality... so what does it do? It makes people do aweful things. I have often thought of the prison guards/doctors or any staff linked to the execution of people. You have to be pretty screwed up in your head to do this kind of work.
If noone would agree to do this as a job, there would be no death penalty as they wouldn't find the staff to apply it. Politicians, judges, jury, guards, doctors, priests... anyone who takes a little part in the execution is a murderer, even tax payers, which means you and me. I hope you all know that some of the taxes you pay go to fund executions?!

So here is the fact:

Pretty much any citizen in the USA, residing in a state applying death penalty has blood on their hands, simply because they passively accept to give money by paying taxes which will then be used to murder people.

Another paradox on this subject: the fact that the USA is a religious mostly christian country and most of these religious lobbies are in favor of the death penalty...  Funny because if I recall, Jesus allowed the romans to kill him rather than defend himself. The most sacred precept of the bible after loving God, is to never take a life... but somehow the government makes us believe that it is ok, as long as it's done in the name of justice... But I really shouldn't get on the subject of religion or this will never end... I will just say this:

Religious people who prone the death penalty are a bunch of hypocritical bastards who think that because they go to church every sunday they will go to heaven. But if they'd read the bible correctly, which probably none of them ever did, they would realize that being christian means doing good around you, being tolerant of others and following the precepts of Jesus... it NEVER means go and murder people, either directly or indirectly, because no matter what these criminals have done, you have no right to put them to death and you will go to hell for it, no matter how many "Noster Pater" you recite!

Now I know that I do sound like I am defending criminals but don't get me wrong... I do think that criminals (high criminals of course, not the petty thief who stole a loaf of bread) should be heavily punished, but I also think that putting a criminal to death is too quick of a punishment and is not the appropriate one. Rapists, I say castrate them, murderers, I say lock them away in a dark closet for the rest of their lives, instead of putting them in a nice TV-equipped room. Reinsertion? I don't believe in it... Parole? Even less... Lock them up forever. Remove them totally from life, give them the bare minimum to live on. Isolate them and let them meditate or go crazy for the rest of their lives on what they have done. Finally let them die alone and miserable.
And here is yet another paradox... How is it that on one hand people are sentenced to death and on the other rapists are being released because they behaved well for a couple months? To me that makes pro-death penalty governments doubly guilty. Guilty for murdering people and guilty for releasing mad criminals and not providing safety for their citizens.
When you think about it, so many criminals escape justice because of "wording" or "administration" problems. Why is it that, when heard for the same crime, a powerful white politician for example will almost never go to jail but a poor black guy will almost always go to jail? Is this really what you call justice?

So here is a simple fact, from the moment that justice is flawed in many ways, it should not be given the ultimate power to put people to death with impunity. It is unfair, immoral and inhuman.

Finally I will quote two people:

One from the more recent popular culture is the beloved fantasy writer J.R.R Tolkien speaking through Gandalf in the chapter 2 of The Fellowship of the Ring:

" Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

 And the second is Voltaire, one of the most amazing philosopher ever, who summarized it all, over 200 years ago:

" It is better to risk saving a culprit than condemn an innocent."

If only their wisdom would be taken into account...

Several petitions are open against death penalty: please show your support by looking at http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/cases/usa-troy-davis  .
Sign the "NOT IN MY NAME" pledge:
 http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/site/c.6oJCLQPAJiJUG/b.7741827/k.62FF/Not_in_my_Name_Pledge/apps/ka/ct/contactus.asp?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b=7741827&en=dmIPI6PPJcIYLgOSLbKULiM9LvL9KmN4LtI9LqNaIAK
Don't forget to also sign this petition which will be presented to the United Nations in December 2012 to declare a moratorium and prevent countries from applying death penalty:  http://www.worldcoalition.org/Petition.html

Signing petitions is important, this is how you change the world... one signature at a time!