Observations...

Rating: Null/10 (16 September 2010)

Almost as interesting as this tale of men behind bars is the enduring popularity it has enjoyed since being released on video following its poor box office. The reason is fairly clear to see: for all its dark setting, the film is about hope and how hope can set you free. We all have hope, and we all feel imprisoned – whether it's by a dead-end job, a loveless relationship, an out-of-shape body – and it's only the hope that things will somehow improve (even if, unlike Andy Dufresne, we do precious little to help things along) that keeps us going. The Shawshank Redemption validates this blind, irrational hope while simultaneously reinforcing it. This is the film's strength, and it uses it to good advantage. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman make believable if unlikely friends – at the beginning of their friendship one lacks hope of any kind while the other is unable to express his feelings, a flaw he later realises is indirectly the reason he finds himself behind bars. By the end of the film both have changed – and both are released.
The film makes use of every genre cliché you can think of: the sadistic guard, the corrupt warden – fifty years ago, Hollywood wardens were mostly beneficial characters, but they seem to have lost their way lately – the bull queers, the fish out of water with no chance of survival, etc, and although this isn't necessarily a weakness, it's familiarity means the overlong running time drags on occasion as we're faced with all too familiar situations. And while there are malevolent prisoners present in the form of the bull queers who wander around looking for 'fresh fish' and vulnerable inmates to rape, all other prisoners are a kind of homogeneous mass, a decent enough bunch with few unique characteristics and no malice or resentment towards a society that has effectively discarded them.
The irony of the film is that the good guys are the ones behind bars – as Dufresne wryly comments, he had to come to prison to become a criminal – while those ostensibly representing justice and law are violent braggarts and bible-bashing hypocrites. Their come-uppance, when it finally arrives, is wholly deserved, and there are few films that engineer a turning of the tables as wholly complete as the one engineered here by Dufresne – another reason for its phenomenal popularity: we all know, or have known, someone like the warden (although perhaps not as extreme), smug and self-serving, who deserves their come-uppance.
Darabont wanted the film to end with Red giving his little 'I hope' bit while the bus he's travelling on disappears over the horizon, and it's a shame the studio didn't let him have his way. That ending on the beach looks exactly like what it is – a tacked on ending to keep the men in suits happy. Andy Dufresne, with his uncompromising sense of purpose, would surely have held firm under their pressure