the shawshank redemption
REVIEW
I was just a kid when I first saw “The Shawshank Redemption” and right away I knew I had seen something special. This movie has carried me through a majority of my life and I have seen it more times than I can remember. It is like and old friend whose company is so familiar and always so welcomed. This may sound strange but I have never chosen to watch “The Shawshank Redemption,” it has always come to me at times in my life when I needed perspective. Out of the blue, it just seems to knock at my door and ask to spend an afternoon catching up. When it is time to say goodbye and I watch the credits roll over that crystal blue ocean settled on to the whites sands of that beach, whatever problems or worries I had seem so far from my mind. I am left feeling a sense of calm and wonder. The feeling of sitting outside on a beautiful day, the sun at my back and the warm grass between my fingers just listening to the wind move between the trees. I don't have a care in the world and am just happy to be apart of this crazy thing called life. It is a feeling I wish I could live in forever but I know it will soon fade away, until it is nearly forgotten and then when I need it most, out of the blue, there will be a knock at my door.
This film is not always an easy film to watch. Most of the film your heart is breaking for Andy Dufresne, the banker convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, who is given two life sentences in a maximum security prison. That is where this story takes place, inside the walls of Shawshank Prison. We follow Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) as he takes on his new life as an inmate in a world most of us know little about. He is mentally and physically abused by prison guards and sexually abused by inmates. Did he kill his wife or is he serving time for a crime he did not commit? Does he deserve the punishment he is has been dealt? It is hard to get a read on Andy because he is not a show of emotions, he is calm and reserved and that can be taken as cold and remorseless. Robbins captures the subtly of this performance as though it was his natural state. Through out the film we get to know his true character, he develops slowly and over time and it is in his interactions with the fellow inmates where the heart of this movie lies.
Andy finds a best friend in fellow inmate, Red, played by Morgan Freeman in maybe his most iconic role. Red is an old hand at prison life and has things pretty well figured out. He is the man other inmates come to when they need something from the outside world, such as liquor, playing cards with naked women on them, toothpaste and so on. He has been serving time since he was a young man and prison life is what he knows best. He has a solid group of friends in the men he surrounds himself with and it is in the banter of these characters where the lightest parts of the movie take place.
Red is our narrator through out the film and it is through his perspective that we get to see Andy and their life inside the prison walls. His narration gives the film a sense poignancy as only a man who has spent his youth in prison could. Morgan Freeman’s voice is so unique in its calming hollow tone and its effectiveness to pull out the rawest emotions of the scene (It is an effect that so many films have tried and not come close to what this film has achieved). Prison life has taken its tole on Red but he knows his place in this world and he has found his comforts there. Andy is different, he has never lost his sense of hope and freedom, he still dreams of a better life outside the prison walls. There are things with in him that can’t be broken or taken away. He keeps those parts of him alive with hope. Hope for a piece of the life he once knew.
Frank Darabont wrote the screenplay for this film based off the novella by Stephen King, entitled “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.” It took Darabont eight weeks to write the script and he would not sell it unless he could direct it himself. This would be his first feature film and the studios did not want to take a risk on him as a first time director. Darabont would not sell even when Rob Reiner offered him 2.5 million to the rights for the script. He held out knowing he was the right person to bring this story to life. In holding strong to his vision he ended up creating a masterpiece. A perfect piece of cinema. I would honestly rank this as the greatest film ever made.
