30 Day Film Challenge-Day 14

​A film that gave you depression

This was another category that I struggled with a bit. It’s hard for me to say that a film actually gave me depression or really depressed me. I can usually separate myself from the action in the films I watch and even when it is a truly depressing film, I don’t really feel depressed by it. I will often sit and think about the action, and consider the film a bit more deeply, but depressed? Not really.

That said, I picked a film that I loved watching when it first came out, but the more and more I watched it, the more I started to appreciate the deeper messages contained within. It’s now a film I have a little bit of a hard time watching as an older adult. There are certain scenes that really hit home, added to the fact that Michael Clarke Duncan has since passed away, making his performance that much more impactful.

I didn’t realize until several years after first seeing the film that it was an adaptation of Stephen King’s novella of the same name. On top of that, the film was directed by Frank Darabont who has previously directed The Shawshank Redemption, another adaptation of a King novella and often nominated among the best films in the history of cinema, at least according to the public voting on the movie site IMDb.

It’s no accident that Duncan’s character in the film, John Coffey, shares his initials with another famous miracle worker. His words can be used for many situations, and none more so than “I’m tired, boss. Mostly I’m tired of people being ugly to each other.” We can all learn a lot from the hulking brute that is John Coffey, executed in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, by a group of guards that understood and believed in his innocence based on his actions. They judged him for what they saw him do firsthand, not based on the color of his skin or what others claimed of him.

Day 13 – A film that put you in deep thought | Day 15 – A film that makes you feel happy

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