It’s hard to wrap my mind around this, but there was a time when The Shawshank Redemption was considered a failure. When it released to theaters in the fall of 1994, people didn’t exactly flock to see it. Part of that was a lack of support by the studio, who barely advertised this mid-budget prison movie by a first-time film director. Part of it was a title that didn’t mean anything to most people and was hard to pronounce, if they could even remember it in the first place. And part of it was simply no one really knew much about this film, and with so few people going to it, there wasn’t enough word-of-mouth to spread around. When it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, it was rereleased in theaters and about doubled its box-office take, but even then it wasn’t exactly a hit. That would come later.
Home video is where this film really found an audience. That, and seemingly endless reruns on TNT. This was one of the only times I remember being able to rent a movie at Blockbuster Video, watch it at home, then go to the theater and watch it again on the big screen on the same day. Of course, I had to do just that. I was among the few back in the day that knew what this film was going in. I had read the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption in high school and remembered wondering why this was not a movie yet. When I saw the first trailers for the film, I recognized what I was seeing immediately and had to see it opening night. I ended up seeing it three times in theaters, including that time immediately after its home video release.
In the years since, I have seen it many times. It is one of those films that I feel I could write about in depth without having to rewatch it again, yet I did anyway. I am glad I did, too, because it has been a number of years since the last time I set aside the two and a half hours needed to go on this journey, and I am a different person than that teenager who was seeing it for the first time. There are things that resonate more with me now than they did then, and there are perspectives that I would have never had in my youth.
The story is a relatively simple one. Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), a banker, is tried and found guilty for the cold-blooded murder of his wife and her lover and is sentenced to two back-to-back life sentences in Shawshank Prison. There he makes some friends, including fellow lifer Ellis “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman). He also makes some enemies, represented by Bogs Diamond (Mark Rolston), one of the prison Bull Queers, known as the Sisters. Bogs has picked Andy as an easy target, and he is assaulted regularly; sometimes he can fight them off, and sometimes not. That comes to an end when several of the guards corner Bogs in his cell after putting Andy in the hospital and beat him so badly he never walks again.
Andy seems shielded from the hopelessness surrounding him, though. He finds ways to fuel his personal interests in geography, reading, and even chess, while currying favor with the guards by using his banking skills to set up trust funds for their kids, do their taxes, and even save one guard, the hard-nosed Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown), from having to pay taxes on an inheritance from his late brother. This has earned him favoritism from the guards, which may or may not have been the reason the guards went after Bogs the way that they did. These skills Andy has have also extended to doing some shady financial deals for the warden, Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton); deals that involve bribes and money laundering.
Years go by. With the arrival of a new prisoner, Tommy (Gil Bellows), some news he brings stirs up trouble for the warden. Tommy once shared a cell with the man who actually killed Andy’s wife and her lover. Tommy’s testimony could get Andy a new trial, maybe even released from prison. This would, of course, bring an end to the warden’s financial windfall, especially Andy’s knack for laundering the money the warden brings in from various bribes and other such schemes. The inevitable, of course, happens, leaving Andy in a desperate position. However, it is a position that he is prepared for, having spent much of his nearly twenty years in prison getting prepared.
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is part of a collection of short novels published under the name Different Seasons. Each of the four stories that make up that larger volume is tied to a specific season of the year. For this story, that season is spring and the book opens with the short subtitle: Hope Springs Eternal. This theme of hope permeates the film, showing not only the need for hope but also the dangers of it. Our introduction to Red is at his twenty-year parole hearing where he enters a room filled with men in suits who ask him one simple question: Do you feel you’ve been rehabilitated? Red enters this room trying to look as pleasant and hopeful as he can but, despite that outward appearance, he gets rejected and sent back out into the prison yard. We will see that same sequence play out two more times throughout the film and each time he is less hopeful, more jaded by the experience. On the final one he is just bitter and over the whole process, having spent forty years of his life in prison and no longer willing to put on a show for these suits. He has lost any hope he may have once had.
And he is not without merit for this attitude. Perhaps the most poignant scene in this film involves an old prisoner, Brooks (James Whitmore), who has been in prison for more than fifty years. Brooks is the prison librarian, an important man inside, but when he is granted parole, he is reduced to nothing more than an old man who cannot keep up with the world he is going back into. Red refers to it as being institutionalized, and that is as good a term as any. You start out hating the prison walls around you, then you get used to them, and eventually, you come to depend on them. Getting paroled destroyed Brooks. Director Frank Darabont uses the imagery of bars to sell this message to us. While in prison, we never actually see Brooks behind bars. Only after he is released do we get that imagery.
Andy comes into the prison looking weak and easy prey to the brutal environment. But eventually, he proves to be a force to be reckoned with, seemingly an expert on any subject, and able to find ways to get people on his side. An early example of this comes when he, alongside several other prisoners, are on special duty, tarring the roof of one of the prison buildings. Andy uses his expertise of the banking industry and tax law to solve a problem for one of the guards, earning beers for the rest of the prisoners as payment for his work. This not only ingratiates him to the other inmates but also to the guards. This also earns him a bit of protection when Bogs Diamond keeps assaulting him. In the book, it specifically says that Andy bribed the guards to attack Bogs, but this has been softened in the film to lead us to believe that they went after Bogs of their own accord for hospitalizing the man who was profiting them. This latter reading keeps us seeing Andy as an altruistic character and not one who uses his influence or resources to hurt others, even if they deserve it.
Darabont knows that because this story is being told from the point of view of the convicts, specifically Red, we have to be fully on their side. Because of that, we never really learn what any of these other convicts did to get into prison in the first place. It had to be heinous to merit the long sentences all of the main characters are serving, but we are never privy to that information. The closest we get is Red admitting to Andy that he is guilty of murder. The book expands on these reasons, but it is rightfully left out of the film. We would feel much differently about any of these characters were we to know the brutal details of their crimes. Darabont used the same tactic in The Green Mile, deliberately avoiding the grizzly details.
Andy Dufresne is a well-read individual; the only explanation we are ever given for how he knows as much as he does about nearly everything. It’s as good as any explanation, too, because we don’t start questioning that until repeat viewings. We also don’t question whether he is guilty of the crime he has been incarcerated for. We don’t see him commit the murder, and his trial makes up about a minute of screen time, most of which is just the prosecuting attorney making arguments that highlight just how weak the evidence is against him. It’s honestly amazing that no appeals were made to his guilty verdict based on that evidence. I can’t tell if the revelation of who really did commit the murder is meant to be a surprise or an affirmation of what we should already be believing; this is a byproduct of having read the book first, I suppose. Whatever the intention, Andy’s innocence seems obvious from the start, so the introduction of Tommy and his revelation does feel like one too many twists to a film that is plenty long enough without it.
In the book, this twist kicks Andy back into gear, giving him the final motivation to move forward with his ultimate plans. It doesn’t play that way in the film. Instead, it feels more like Andy’s plans to escape this prison culminate perfectly with Tommy’s arrival and revelations. This is not a weakness in the plot, just something a bit convenient for the sake of the plot. This also removes moments from the book that show Andy himself starting to feel institutionalized, afraid of the world he is planning to escape to. It’s an element that works in the novel but doesn’t really need to be there in the film.
I read a negative review of this movie years ago where the reviewer complained about how everything was too black-and-white amongst the characters. The prisoners were all likable guys, and the guards were corrupt and violent. He also pointed out that there were no homosexual relationships going on inside the prison that were consensual. The gripe here was how all gay sex in the film was the product of rape. There is a point here; this isn’t particularly realistic in that matter. But the film isn’t meant to be realistic. Andy is a bit of a metaphor, a figurehead for not allowing the prison environment to wear down your hope in life. It doesn’t need something like Andy and Red becoming lovers in jail, no matter how some might want to paint them in that light.
This film was not well received when it first released in theaters. But in the years since, it has found an audience and remains the top-rated film in IMDb history with more and more people finding it and being inspired by it. Life can put you in a box and leave you with a simple choice: get busy living or get busy dying. There is more to it than that, of course, but that is what it boils down to in the end. How we respond to what we have been given makes us who we are. Accepting the limitations and finding a way to not only work within them but also find a way around them makes all the difference. It’s the difference between going out like Brooks does or finding something to live for. The Shawshank Redemption is a brutal movie at times, but it ultimately is an uplifting movie, too, which is why it finally found an audience and remains as popular as it has for over thirty years.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Niki Marvin
Best Actor in a Leading Role: Morgan Freeman
Best Writing (Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published): Frank Darabont
Best Music (Original Score): Thomas Newman
Best Sound: Robert J. Litt, Elliot Tyson, Michael Herbick, and Willie D. Burton
Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins
Best Film Editing: Richard Francis-Bruce
____________________________________________________
Release Date: September 23, 1994
Running Time: 142 minutes
Rated R
Starring: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, William Sadler, Clancy Brown, Gil Bellows, and James Whitmore
Directed by: Frank Darabont
Comments
Post a Comment