Prison movies are always Keepers

Rating: 10/10 (18 April 2015)

Firstly I love this film. It's a story about hope and dreams and one whose emotional impact is as great as the Pacific Ocean is blue.The Shawshank Redemption is a perfectly woven, superbly performed, and flawlessly shot cinematic masterpiece that is sure to never be forgotten. Along with Darabont's other prison outing, The Green Mile, he has crafted a pair of subtly affecting dramas with real heart. Shawshank, however takes the prize. Phenomenal stuff. 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). It is his voice remembering the first time he saw Andy ("looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over"), and predicting, wrongly, that he wouldn't make it in prison.
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 living' or get busy dying'."
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, when everyone else plods or sidles?