THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994)

Neha says
Writer-director Frank Darabont’s 1994 moving period prison drama ( based on Stephen King’s short story “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”) may have tanked at the box office, grossing just $ 28 million; may have been overshadowed by the other 1994 news makers that include Forest Gump and Pulp Fiction and may have landed itself a consolation prize in the form of 7 Academy nominations but in the league of cult classics that have names like Casablanca, Office Space and It’s a Wonderful Life you have one more- The Shawshank Redemption, a film that stood the test of time and has through home video, numerous cable TV airings, critical acclaim, word of mouth found it’s audience and it’s rewarding place in many a top 100 lists. It’s far too good a film to be ranked at # 72 on the AFI list but like the many mysteries of life the parameters that determine these rankings continue to baffle me.

Following the story of Shawshank Prison inmate Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) wrongly incarcerated for the murder of his wife and her lover, we see how Darabont manipulates the conventions of the genre, where violence, injustice, gang rivalries, corruption, homosexuality and physical abuse, along with a ruthless prison guard prototype in the way of Captain Hadley (Clancy Brown) and a “discipline and bible” loving, crooked, self righteous Warden Norton(Bob Gunton) present insurmountable obstacles but Andy lies redeemed by both a friendship with another inmate Red (Morgan Freeman) and his inner fortitude and patience. He refuses to surrender his hope for change or be “institutionalized” The gentle and understated manner in which Darabont contrasts the dark and doom of prison life with the foresight and cunning intellect of an Andy who manages to use the system to beat it, never wavering from Andy’s journey, reinforces how sometimes a story needs to be ultra specific for it to break the confines of character and become universally accessible. At some point the myriad ideas of faith, survival, friendship, freedom, redemption, love, loneliness, isolation, life and death, fear, persistence and optimism took me on my own personal journey of discovery and contemplation and when a film is able to do that so unpretentiously it’s a pot of gold. When you see Andy crawling his way through a sewage tunnel coming out on the other side triumphant in spirit or when you’re on the receiving end of powerful dialogues like “I guess it comes down to a simple choice. Get busy living or get busy dying” you want to revisit it time and again to simply be inspired.

When the film released it was criticized for its 142 minute long length and slow pacing but for me I was too involved to even feel it. The necessary pace captures the passage of time so crucial to the story, character arcs, growth of a life-long friendship between Andy and the reflective Red and that churning endurance that eats away at the nmates, quietly and unhurriedly earning my sympathies. It’s only when you reach that dramatic and rewarding culmination where Darabont unleashes that contained energy do you completely appreciate the journey. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman add that heart, soul and humanity to their characters while James Whitmore is endearing as life-long inmate come prison librarian Brooks. Clancy Brown and Bob Gunton capture that misplaced moral superiority in their brutal characters with a penetrating satanic flair that makes a stronger case for the more empathetic characters like Freeman and Robbins. Technical credits are 1994 standard. The musical score is stirring; the production design and layout of the prison, the prime set piece of the story is top notch and does well to create a lived in atmosphere and the camera work never lets the setting get monotonous to the eye.

A true cinematic inspiration! Surrender to the experience and walk away the better for it! A film that reminds me why I love the movies as the writing, direction, performances, message of hope and spirit and technical chops come together in dynamic synergy to give us a love letter that celebrates being human.

Ira says

I remember watching The Shawshank Redemption for the first time when I was thirteen years old. And I remember how affected I was, and how, for many years hence, often to the bewildered expressions on my schoolmates faces, I would quote it as one of my absolute favorite films. Hell, I somehow feel a pang of righteous possessiveness even today, seeing it at the #1 spot on the IMDB list, hearing it quoted by people as their favorite film. It was mine way back when I was a rebellious, brooding, teenager! After all, that is the beauty of a truly great film, and no matter how often I watch it, no matter how much my list of top 10 favorite films has adapted over the past decade and a half, it still manages to hold its own for being one of the very few movies that makes me laugh, cry and feel magnificently uplifted. (Elephant Man and Chariots of Fire being the other two from my childhood that have the same impact). So much has been said and so much will be said that I feel I need to re-look, reassess and give you something fresh. And this time while watching, I chose to do so through a funny, not often recounted moment.

“Lord it’s a miracle! A man just disappears like a fart in the wind”. Desperate, comical, absurd, wonderful, exhilarating and bursting with the capacity of the human spirit to endure and overcome, Norton’s frustration when he discovers Andy Dufresne has escaped from Shawshank prison after 19 years, without a trace, and through a finely fool proof method, is priceless. And more than that image of Andy crawling through shit to freedom, ripping his shirt off and bathing himself in the pouring rain as a free man, more than even the lingering opening scene, inter-cut between Andy waiting for his wife and her lover and the courtroom where he is being convicted, where we don’t know whether he actually did it or not, (Everybody in Shawshank’s innocent, after all), and more than the unforgettable final image of the happy reunion between two central figures, tinier moments stand out and tickle you in Darabont’s story.

A story that explores not just themes of law, morality, humanity, friendship and the triumph of the human spirit but also of the darker, greediest, often inhumane, violent, primal, brutal, aspects of human nature. On Andy’s first night in prison, when Red loses his bet on him being the first one to crack and cry, groups of prisoners chant taunts and teases and one passing voice yells, “I don’t belong here either. They run this place like a f****** prison”. The sarcasm is sharp, frontal, visceral and almost escapable. And even while here is something astonishingly sincere and graceful about Darabont’s storytelling, the tone of satire and anger is just beneath the surface. And this time, I found myself to moments like these. Red being rejected from his parole, again and again. Old Brooks, prison librarian who’s spent half a century inside those walls attacking a fellow inmate Heywood, desperately hoping they would keep him in prison. Tommy Williams, a new young prisoner, taken under Andy’s wing meeting his ultimate fate.

Prison is a funny, strange and frightening, place, a place that turns innocent men, ‘straight like arrows’ in real life into crooks on the inside, a place that has the capacity to hurt and make life hell, a place as Red explains, you hate, get used to and then somehow, start to depend on. A place that gets all kinds of men and all kinds of criminals and spreads them out on the same clean slate. And that slate gets miserable, confining, and painful, with the ability to drive a man mad.

Andy & Red’s friendship and the performances of Robbins & Freeman (two actors that didn’t get their due that year because of Hank’s our de force, Forrest Gump) are what root this one and help it turn on its wide axis. Freeman’s voiceover, consistent, felt and moving in its simplicity begins the film, it also carries it. And I truly mean that. Things would’ve been different, incomplete, and somehow hollow without his voice over (a tool Darabont places in the hands of the only actor I believe who could’ve carried its force). Freeman lends his voice and narration loveliness, a lyrical but lofty timbre and an even optimism that carefully steers away from the sentimental and seeks the simply sincere.

Theirs is a friendship, which is unlikely and absolutely real, genuine and touching, one that stands the often-grueling test of time. From the moment they first meet, to the way they find instances to surprise or help one another, to Andy’s ability to stay untouched and infuse an inexplicable sort of calm to those men around him. While they drink beer on a sun kissed rooftop, tasting freedom for a few brief seconds, or while they listen to opera on the prison speakers resounding through the open field or even while Andy creates a centre of books and music, of learning, of the men’s redemption if you will, Red is the one though closest to Andy, who seems furthest to him. And even as the years pass and you can feel how close these two men are, you can’t also help feel how different they are. And that’s what really for me is special about this one. The way the narrative and Darabont’s writing, camerawork and editing constantly pit these two sides (along with the third of Hadley & Norton) against each other. Through the layers of politics, violence, corruption, greed, awful truths, scams, conspiracies and the friendships within the prison walls, 2 men, 2 views, 2 worlds, the outside and the inside, 2 realities and 2 ways of looking at life, emerge.

Hope is a dangerous thing Red insists. And Andy, thrown into a dark cell for a month, Mozart in his head, will never agree with him. Hope is all we have, and that is the truth. Get busy living people, he says.Do that people, and find films like this one, it won’t happen often.