The Picture of Freedom

Rating: 9/10 (23 September 2008)

Shawshank Redemption is great picture. (My remark) is also an annoying cliché. I am not the first person to daydream and then write why this is the best-loved movie either.
The top movies are: a) War dramas/ b) Wild West masterpieces/ c) Pop Culture. The latter category is populated especially by Mafia movies, stories about capable people hidden from the eyes that govern most people's lives. Movies about the most successful of us that live their own way. In other words, Cool films.
Alright, so what is "Shawshank" doing among these? My take is that Shawshank touches a key in every one of us, and that key sounds as a description of freedom. It has no subtle, hidden messages. It's not cool. It's plain, straightforward. It has -though, this subject that may be the most sought right in the history of man. We always say after we pass a bleak period of our lives that it's good to know a deeply low and depressing moment since you know it cannot be worse. Well, that's the feeling I get about Shawshank's resonance.
In some sense, I find a comparison basis with The Beatles. Why were the latter the best ever music group? Well, because they were so simple yet so effective. Does music or film has to have a deep hidden message? Music and film must impress, first and foremost. Why we are most of the time preoccupied of making a difference from other people through our preferences, separating ourselves by fake elitist values, instead of creating something our own (in some sense "our own, together"), making us known through our very names. But I digress and I apologize for maybe wasting your time.
The bottom line is not that Shawshank is the best, but that it is a favorite, a loved picture, like many others. Don't we have to give a ten to oh-so-many others without being able to give it more. Likewise it impresses us that at the end credits we just keep silent just to not be clichéd. At least we come here and write reviews...