The Best Movie of All Time.

Rating: 10/10 (25 December 2016)

Once again, another year (or Christmas) goes by and this movie is thrust onto the television screen for all to enjoy. And what an enjoyable movie it is - as I've seen it countless times now.
The major theme that runs throughout this film is hope. The main character Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins, is the one who shines a beacon of hope like an Olympic athlete carrying the torch to the cauldron, and this starts from time he enters Shawshank prison. The other main character, Red, played by Morgan Freeman, said he took to liking him from the beginning as "he strolled, like a man in a park without a care or a worry in the world, like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place. Yeah, I think it would be fair to say...I liked Andy from the start." And Andy even inspires Red to "hope" for a life outside of the prison walls and to join him in a free life on a Mexican beach by the Pacific sea.
And the theme of hope is also enforced by a darker side. The prison librarian, Brooks, played by James Whitmore, who has been a resident for 50 years, is given parole and leaves prison to "enter" life outside of the four walls. And upon realising that he can't come to terms with the pace of life and no family or friends to turn to, he loses hope, and ends his life. I think that this theme is the magic that most people like about this movie. It's the glue that joins the friendship between Andy and Red. And its the thing that viewers, like me, can relate our life and experiences to.
Even after so many viewings I still feel that this movie is powerful and a revelation to pretty much every person. Its pretty much a powerful contemporary tale of a Biblical story. A story about hope, friendship, loss, betrayal, contempt (particularly what the antagonist prison warden Norton brings), brutality, injustice, crime and so forth.
I think that this movie deserves to be played on a yearly basis, particularly on Christmas day. It's a modern day retelling of a Biblical story.
I believe everyone should see this movie at least once.