The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

This is not the typical movie to make comment about since the storyline is revolving inside a prison. There is something quite precious that The Shawshank Redemption evokes in us because it forms the likeness of a family around. There are several films that give rather life experiences quickly and alter vividly. Shawshank, on the other hand, goes on and looks. It is a contrast to the story in which we are drawn into, how the lives of these men within the walls who have lived together are narrated in the perspective of the calm and fatherly narrator. Most films achievements way beyond this one; it is about movement of an idea which is friendship and hope over the course of one’s life.

It’s amusing that while the main character of the movie is an imprisoned gangster who used to be a banker named Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), the audience only sees around, on only his face, at his hands and at the wall. In the very beginning we only see him receiving two life sentences for murdering his wife and her paramour and this goes directly onto his inner view and from ther onward it makes a definite shift towards another pocition which is that of the prison’s inmates or more precisily life prisoner Ellis ‘Red’ Redding (Morgan Freeman). In such a scenario, it is Mr. Red Redding’s voice whose memory of seeing Andy the first time he came to jail and termed him as someone whom a wind would easily knock down. For once after one month in prison, he made every effort to finish his license and to so much predict he would not be able to survive inside the walls.

From the time when Andy boards the prison van to the very end of the film, we only witness how others regard him who include Red who later becomes his best pal, the elderly Brooks the librarian, the criminal Warden Norton, warders and inmates. Red is an intermediate character in the film. That is the character we associate ourselves with and when the moment of redemption comes, it is Red that weeps tears of joy. Sachar has also illustrated looking through Andrew’s eyes that there are things or causes that one has to be true to self, never to give up, wait, do small acts that help one seek a chance for bigger actions. “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really,” he tells Red. “Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin.’”

From the aspect of the film as I perceive it, the whole structure is what is not the story of the hero but of the audience how they look at him, how they feel, how they respect him. If as was the shifting centers of the chronology, Andy was placed as a hero active suffering, then it would have been an ordinary screenplay without some mystery. But this guy makes us wonder. Did he really kill those two people? Why is he always quiet? Why is it that he can walk in the yard of penitentiary center like a soccer player on the feild, while over everyone else is marching or creeping like an ant?

The American people love excitement at the movies and therefore they buy the books whose works provide it.

Very few would be willing to take the risk of making a film of redemption. For a good number of people, the idea of making a good film cap rather awful. However, there is a need for such uplifting films and once made, they tend to linger on one’s mind even when they have no immediate reception. “The Shawshank Redemption” was screened for the first time at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of 1994, and then was released in theaters several weeks afterward. It had cheap distribution but attained good reviews (it’s original gross of $18 million didn’t meet its expenses, it was further re-released after getting seven nominations for the Oscar including best picture).

There was not much to go in the film:

It had an awful title, it was tagged as a “prison drama” and women hate prison dramas, there used to be very few actions, well respected but non Hollywood actors were cast in the movie, and the movie was 142 minutes longer than a standard film. This appears to be a film that required people talking about it to create an interest which in fact business was slowly developing but growing before it was pulled out of cinemas. As great as this film would have been, left to its path of self-discovery, it would have continued strengthening and screening for upwards of months. That was not what transpired.

Rather, in the case of one of the most tremendous examples within the narrative of home video warfare to be ever encoded and lift up his head through naturalistic television screenings it did find the mass audience it deserved on the tapes and discs in the video coffers. In about five years’ time, anyway, “Shawshank” became a spectacle; a “lost” video bestseller and renter whose fans, feels like he has unearthed it at their own time. When the Wall Street Journal published his article on the “Shawshank” honeymoon in April 1999, it was first in the general rating of the greatest films by the Internet Movie Database and held the top position for several months; it is usually in the top four or five spots.

Such polls and such rentals only show popularity but the reasons as to what makes people adore ‘Shawshank’ so much are not quite clear. Perhaps because it feels more like a religious experience rather than a film concept. It does have its exciting payoff scenes (like the one wherein Andy’s IRS monologue makes prison guards huddle together in baseball uniforms queueing up just so he could do their taxes). But there is so much of the quiet, the solitude, and the philosophizing about life in the film. The wicked moments of crude action (such as the rape of Andy) are treated in a detached manner and are not sensationalized.

Speaking of torture, in this way the feature also obtains new meanings in that it shifts away from lingerings and focusing on Andy’s torture. Heavy physical abuse is then followed by a wider shot to reify the relativity of perception. I appreciate how the camera doesn’t pan in to zoom on the cuts and bruises on his body, rather like other inmates, everyone gives way to him.

Perhaps, the Morgan Freeman character is seen as the one who takes the film full circle in its spiritual journey. He is seen at three different parole hearings with a span of twenty, thirty and ultimately forty years having passed. The first one is a narration, someone’s trying to be clever, the entire movie started with Andy being sentenced to jail, and now we are shown the parole board and we assume that the presentation is going to be about ‘give us back our Andy’. No. That is when we first see Red. On completing the first appeal, he appeals to the board on the grounds that he is rehabilitated. In the second, he is merely abiding by the rules. Finally, in the third one, he denounces the concept of reforming people at all, and somewhere along the way, perhaps, this spiritual release is all he needed for the board to let him go.

There is a consistent major flaw. In prison and immediately retaining their position, Red ruled the country. He is the prison’s problem solver. He can get you cigarettes, a rock pick, or a Rita Hayworth poster. He is worthless and non existent in the world. We have already seen what became of the old librarian (James Whitmore) who was so unhappy and abandoned in all this freedom looking for all the corners. The final part, where Andy aids Red in relation to his accepting himself in his full capacity, is heart wrenching especially so, since Andy, just like before, is out of sight, and again all interactions occur by means of messages, pictures as seen though Red’s recollections.

Screenplay and direction for this film, which is inspired by a story by Stephen King, is by Frank Darabont. The filmmakers give themselves a certain license which more often than not is feared. One does experience the deliberation, the consideration and the thoughtfulness of Freeman’s narration, in the movie’s progression too. People seem to have a prevailing impression in Hollywood that when it comes to action films, the audience can hardly focus on short rather than on fast action sequences, hence the constant need of carefully timed action sequences. Yes. A picture with a plot such as in “Shawshank” which seizes one’s consciousness cannot be actually very comfortable to watch.

Deliberate and expressive, yet, is the dialogue. The character of Andy in the movie portrays a persuasive role, played by Tim Robbins who speaks with less emphasis. It is certainly very rare to expect that from him. He is a man and he can do SELF SUCK for YEARS, and then, splurge on some action, as in sing an aria from ‘Marriage of Figaro’ of Mozart. (The overhead shot of the prisoners in the yard listening to the music with their mesmerized faces is one of the film’s epiphanies.) Since he doesn’t offer himself willingly or reach out to us or show his sentiments too coldly or too loudly, he is more interesting: Knowing what people are thinking is often less enjoyable than imagining what the character is thinking.

Roger Deakins’ cinematic perspective is tasteful, not ostentatious. In the opening sequence, there is a helicopter shot and then a shot looking at the prison walls which serve to set the location as a prison. The camera moves to the shots after the dialogue instead of beforehand. Thomas Newman employs music not to clarify things, but to enhance them. There is even an elegant detail when the low pitch sounds, experienced during the first assassination, are later repeated as a memorable quote of a young convict who tells how he heard such a description through a wall.

The way Darabont presents the film is that the filmmaker is an observer of the story rather than an enhancer of it. Upstaging, axis dominance, whatever in fact does not exist in this film at all, as the actors are happy to be confined in the avatars, the narrative proceeds in a linear manner, and quite logically the movie also depicts the slow turning of the clock hands of life. There was a different world before this, Red explains, and you are taken to that cell, once those bars slam home it is a different thing altogether. One blinks and the old life disappears without a trace. All but the time for one to meditate over it remains.” A couple of minutes into the movie, I felt that I was enjoying it more than how I enjoyed it in the first viewing. It is often the same with the movies as one’s affinity for nice ones grows with time. It has been said that life is a prison and we are red Andy is our god of salvation. According to Rosenblum, most ‘good’ art nonetheless says something much more significant than what it lets up: mystical metaphysical essences of hunger.

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There was not much to go in the film:

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