Deliberate, too, is the dialogue. Tim Robbins makes Andy a man of few words, quietly spoken. He doesn't get real worked up. 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. Old life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it. Watching the film again, I admired it even more than the first time I saw it.