The Shawshank Redemption

Rating: 10/10 (15 October 2013)

Classic review by R.E.
This is a film that is deeper than most films; about continuity in a lifetime, based on friendship and hope.
Interesting that although the hero of the film is the convicted former banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), the action is never seen from his point of view. The film's opening scene shows him being given two life sentences for the murder of his wife and her lover, and then we move, permanently, to a point of view representing the prison population and particularly the lifer Ellis 'Red' Redding (Morgan Freeman).
From Andy's arrival on the prison bus to the film's end, we see only how others see him - Red, who becomes his best friend, Brooks the old librarian, the corrupt Warden Norton, guards and prisoners. Red is our surrogate. He's the one we identify with, and the redemption, when it comes, is Red's. We've been shown by Andy's example that you have to keep true to yourself, not lose hope, bide your time, set a quiet example and look for your chance. "I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really," he tells Red. "Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'." The key to the film's structure, I think, is that it's not about its hero, but about our relationship with him - our curiosity, our pity, our admiration. If Andy had been the heroic center, bravely enduring, the film would have been conventional, and less mysterious. But we wonder about this guy. Did he really kill those two people? Why does he keep so much to himself? Why can he amble through the prison yard like a free man on a stroll? People like excitement at the movies, and other titles provide that. But there's a hunger for messages of hope, and when a film offers one, it's likely to have staying power even if it doesn't grab an immediate audience.
The movie premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 1994, and opened a few weeks later. It got good reviews but did poor business ($18 million B.O.; only another $10 million after 7 Oscar noms).
There wasn't much going for it: It had a terrible title, it was a "prison drama", it contained almost no action, starred actors who were not big stars, and it was long at 142 minutes. This was a movie that needed word-of-mouth to find an audience.
Then, in one of the most remarkable stories in home video history, it found its real mass audience on tapes & TV. In five years, "Shawshank" was a phenomenon, a video best renter and seller. When the Wall Street Journal ran an article about Shawshank in 1999, it was first place in the IMDb vote of 250 best films.
Polls and rentals reflect popularity but don't explain why people value "Shawshank" so fervently. It does have entertaining payoff moments (as when Andy does all of the guards taxes). But much of the movie involves quiet, solitude, and philosophical discussions about life. The moments of violence are seen objectively, not exploited. The movie avoids lingering on Andy's suffering.
The Morgan Freeman character is carrier of the film's spiritual arc. We see him at three parole hearings, decades apart. The first hearing involves storytelling trickery; the film has opened with Andy's sentencing, and as we see the parole board we expect to listen to Andy's appeal. But, no, that's when we first see Red. In his first appeal he tries to convince the board he's been rehabilitated. In the second, he just goes through the motions. In the third, he rejects the whole notion of rehabilitation, and somehow in doing so he sets his spirit free and is released.
There's an underlying problem. Behind bars, Red is king. He's the prison fixer, able to get you a pack of cigarettes, a little rock pick or a Rita Hayworth poster. On the outside, he has no status or identity. We've already seen what happened to the old librarian (James Whitmore), lonely and adrift in freedom. The last act, in which Andy helps Red accept his freedom, is deeply moving - all the more so because Andy again operates at a distance, with letters and postcards, and is seen through Red's mind.
Frank Darabont wrote and directed the film, basing it on a story by Stephen King. His film grants itself a leisure that most films are afraid to risk. The movie is as deliberate, considered and thoughtful as Freeman's narration.
Deliberate, too, is the dialogue. Tim Robbins makes Andy a man of few words, quietly spoken. He doesn't get real worked up. He is his own man, capable of keeping his head down for years and then indulging in a grand gesture, as when he plays an aria from Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro." (The overhead shot of the prisoners in the yard, spellbound by the music, is one of the film's epiphanies.)
Roger Deakins' cinematography is tactful, not showy. Two opening shots, one from a helicopter, one of prison walls looming overhead, establish the prison. Shots follow the dialogue instead of anticipating it. Thomas Newman's music enhances rather than informs, and there is a subtle touch in the way deep bass rumblings during the early murder are reprised when a young prisoner recalls another man's description of the crime.
Darabont constructs the film to observe the story, not to punch it up or upstage it. "When they put you in that cell," Red says, "when those bars slam home,that's when you know it's for real. Old life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it."
Affection for good films often grows with familiarity, as it does with music. Some have said life is a prison, we are Red, Andy is our redeemer. All good art is about something deeper than it admits.