Hi all,
I was recommended by one of my friends to watch this movie 5 years back. At that time it’s rating on IMDB was below 50, but right now check IMDB’s top 250 movies…this is on the top of the chart….Why??????
This is how I felt after watching Shawshank Redemption……….
Fear can hold you prisoner.Hope can set you free.
Director: Frank Darabont
Writer: Stephen King
Screenplay: Frank Darabont
Cinematography: Roger Deakins
Editor: Richard Francis-Bruce
Music: Thomas Newman
Producer: Niki Marwin
In India, we are not familiar with this kind of film making where a story is told from a third person’s perspective.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) is an impressive, engrossing piece of film-making from director/screenwriter Frank Darabont who adapted horror master Stephen King’s 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (first published in Different Seasons) for his first feature film. The inspirational, life-affirming and uplifting, old-fashioned style Hollywood product (resembling The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and Cool Hand Luke (1967) is a combination prison/dramatic film and character study.
An elaborate and surprisingly moving guide to retaining ones own humanity while those around you lose theirs, The Shawshank Redemption is an actors dream!. In the late 40s Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is a young and successful banker, content with life. Unfortunately the sky falls in when his wife and her golf pro lover are discovered riddled with bullets, barely hours after Andy learnt of her adultery. The final, crushing blow is that Andy actually drove up to the fateful house, loaded with whisky and bullets; a fact he readily admits to. Now, however, the stories related by Andy and the prosecutor diverge; according to the latter Andy took cold-blooded revenge, even pausing to reload his weapon. Faced with such a prevalence of evidence, Andy staggers from the courtroom under the load of two life sentences.
Inside Shawshank Prison, which rumor calls the most brutal in New England, the inmates place bets. Spotting the tall and thin and out of place figure of Andy, Ellis “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman) reckons that he’ll be the first to crack. With little fanfare the reasoning behind this prediction becomes clear; the sadistic and swaggering figures of Warden Norton (Bob Gunton) and head guard Capt.Hadley (Clancy Brown). Driven by the need to prove that they run the tightest, toughest jail within hundreds of miles, arbitrary abuse is frequent. Andy seems to cotton onto this fact pretty quickly, which is why he’s not the one who breaks down in a paroxysm of regret; that honour is reserved for Fat Ass (Frank Medrano). Regrettably he doesn’t live to learn from his mistake; Shawshank is hard like that.
Based upon a short story by Stephen King, The Shawshank Redemptionis unlike any other adaptation of his work. Mercifully free of cheap horror and overwrought dialogue, this tale celebrates the resilience of the human spirit. Set over a period of many decades, the film takes its time in drawing together the strands of prison life. Each thread has a different life story encoded within it, yet together they form a single design; that prison solves nothing. In contrast it condemns ordinary, if misguided, folk to the tedium of abuse. Whatever individuality once existed is stripped from them. This is a simplification of course; the power of The Shawshank Redemption is that it sucks you into this particular world and exposes you to one possible tale. This single fibre concerns the seemingly naive figure of Andy, trapped within a world of pain and danger. Where lesser men might have crumbled in time, Andy is a man with hidden reserves.
In its heart The Shawshank Redemption is driven by the strength of its performances. Fortunately director Frank Darabont saw fit to hire a talented cast, rather than a bevy of high-profile names; a decision which lifts his creation from the merely ordinary. Robbins is thoroughly excellent as the clever and utterly decent Andy. While innocent and overly trusting, this is the key to the strength that sustains him; nothing can crush his optimism. Over and above these broad strokes Robbins also excels in the details, throwing in a faint smile or a leading comment when necessary. Equally impressive, perhaps even more so, Morgan Freeman is dazzling as the institutionalised Red, ground down by a wasted life. Near enough an organic constituent of the stone walls, Freeman gives his character a depth that hints at loss, regret, bitterness and hopelessness without once admitting to it. To the usually profound task of narration Freeman brings a captivating balance, being informative without overwhelming the action. This is how we get to see inside Andy, a crucial window into his ability to cope.
Elsewhere The Shawshank Redemption shines by virtue of its compelling minor characters. From the very good to the very bad, almost every speaking part adds something to the backdrop behind Robbins and Freeman. In no particular order, veteran theatrical James Whitmore gives elderly librarian Brooks Hatlen. Effortlessly indicating how prison can drain everything worth cherishing from an inmate, before tossing the empty husk into an uncertain world, Whitmore is memorable. Youngster Gil Bellows, as delinquent Tommy, is also fine, casting a crucial joker into Andy’s disastrous hand. At the other and of the scale, both Gunton and Sadler are titanium hard and blood-vomit repellent. There is nothing but agony in their words and actions, a state far harder to achieve than to describe. Placed together these roles illuminate the prison, moving but never distracting the focus from Andy and Red’s friendship.
There are, of course, weaknesses to The Shawshank Redemption. For a start the prisoners are too erudite and not nearly nasty or brutish enough, while the guards are overly stereotyped. In addition there is a bundle of minor loose ends, a result of trying to cover so much expository ground; the most obvious of these is how the cast hardly appear to age. This is, however, being fairly picky. On the positive side the film has a terrific and intelligent script, reasonable photography and performances of real emotion. Instead of insulting its audience, The Shawshank Redemption asks them to feel, think and identify. This is a rare accomplishment.
Story:
The story of Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption begins in 1948, when Andy Dufresne arrives at Shawshank prison. In contrast to most other convicts, Dufresne is not a hardened criminal but a soft-spoken young banker, convicted of killing his wife and her lover. Like almost everyone else in Shawshank, Dufresne claims to be innocent. As we later learn throughout the novella, Andy, unlike almost everyone else in Shawshank, actually isinnocent.
Red, the narrator, has an ability to deliver smuggling of almost any type (except, on his own principles, hard drugs and weapons) into Shawshank. This makes him an important man within the prison’s social structure—and it is also the reason that he first becomes acquainted with Andy.
As a free man, Andy had been a rock-hound and now he has immense amounts of free time on his hands, so he asks Red to get him a rock hammer, a tool he uses to shape the rocks he finds in the exercise yard into small sculptures. The next item he orders from Red is a large poster of Rita Hayworth. When taking the order, Red reflects that Andy is, quite uncharacteristically, excited like a teenager about the poster, but does not think more of it at the time.
One spring day, Andy and Red and some other prisoners are tarring a roof when Andy overhears a particularly nasty and sadistic guard griping over the amount of tax he will have to pay on a sum of money bequeathed him by a long-estranged brother. Andy approaches the guard, almost getting thrown off the roof in the process, and tells him that he can legally shelter the money from taxation by giving it to his wife. Andy offers to help the guard to prepare the necessary paperwork for the transaction, in exchange for some beer for the other prisoners on the roof. The guard agrees, and as word of the occurrence spreads, more and more of the prison staff discover that they can use Andy’s help for tax returns, loan applications, and other financial advice, at no charge, of course. He quickly becomes a valuable asset to the prison staff.
A gang of aggressive homosexual prisoners called “The Sisters”, led by Bogs Diamond, gangs up on and rapes any prisoners they feel they can handle, and Andy is no exception. However, when Andy makes himself useful to the guards they protect him from “The Sisters”. One night Bogs is found in his cell, ‘inexplicably’ unconscious and severely beaten. Andy is also allowed to stay alone in his cell instead of having a cell mate like most other prisoners. For a short period, he shares a cell with an Indian called Normaden, but is soon alone again, Normaden having complained about a “bad draft” in the cell.
Andy’s work assignment is shifted from the laundry to the prison’s small library, then under the stewardship of Brooks Hatlen, one of the few other prisoners with a college degree. Red dryly notes that Brooks’ degree is in animal husbandry, “but beggars can’t be choosers.” The new assignment also allows Andy to spend more time doing financial paperwork for the staff. When Brooks is paroled, Andy takes charge of the library and starts to send applications to the Maine state Senate for money for books. For a long time he gets no response to his weekly letters until the Senate finally relents, thinking Andy will stop requesting funds. Instead of ceasing his letter writing, he starts writing twice as often. His diligent work results in a major expansion of the library’s collection, and he also helps a number of prisoners earn equivalence diplomas preparing them for life after parole.
The warden of Shawshank, Norton, also realizes that a man of Andy’s skills is useful. He has started a program called “Inside-Out” where convicts do work outside the prison for minimum wages. Normal companies outside cannot compete with the cost of Inside-Out workers, so sometimes they offer Norton bribes not to bid for contracts. This cash has to be laundered somehow, and Andy makes himself useful here as well.
One day, Andy hears from another prisoner, Tommy, whose former cellmate had bragged about killing a rich golfer and some hot-shot lawyer’s wife (Andy latches onto the idea that the word “lawyer” could easily have been mixed up with “banker”, the professions being similarly viewed by the general public), and framing the lawyer for the crime. Upon hearing Tommy’s story, Andy realizes that if this evidence could be brought before a court, he could be given a new trial and a chance at freedom. Norton scoffs at the story, however, and as soon as possible he makes sure Tommy is moved to another, lower security, prison, presumably as compensation for promising that he never talk about this anymore. Andy is too useful to Norton to be allowed to go free, and furthermore he knows details about Norton’s corrupt dealings. After losing his customary cool with the warden over the issue, and spending a couple of months in solitary as a result, Andy resigns himself that the prospect for his legal vindication has become non-existent.
Before being sentenced to life, Andy managed, with the help of his closest friend, to sell off his assets and invest them under a pseudonym. This made-up person, Peter Stevens, has a driver’s license, social security card, and other credentials. The documents required to claim Peter Stevens’s assets and assume his identity are in a safe deposit box in a Portland bank; the key to the box is hidden under a black rock in a rock wall lining a hay field in the small town of Buxton, not too far from Shawshank.
After eighteen years in prison, Andy shares the information with Red, describing exactly how to find the place and how one day “Peter Stevens” will own a small seaside resort hotel in Mexico. Andy also tells Red that he could use a man who knows how to get things. Red, somewhat confused about why Andy has confided this information in him, reflects on Andy’s continued ability to surprise.
One morning after he has been incarcerated for nearly twenty-seven years, Andy literally disappears from his locked cell. After searching the prison grounds and surrounding area without finding any sign of an escaped man, the warden looks in Andy’s cell and discovers that the poster on his wall (now showing Linda Ronstadt) covers a man-sized hole. Andy had used his rock hammer—and a replacement when the original wore down—not just to shape rocks, but to dig a hole, incredibly painstakingly and over many years, through the wall. Once through the wall, he broke into a sewage pipe, crawled through it for some 500 yards, emerged into a field beyond prison’s outer perimeter and vanished. His rock-hammer and prison uniform are found outside the pipe. How he made good his escape with no equipment, clothing, or known accomplices, nobody can determine.
A few weeks later, Red gets a blank postcard from a small town near the Mexican border, and surmises that Andy crossed the border there. Shortly afterwards, Red is paroled. After forty years’ imprisonment, he finds the transition to life “outside” to be a difficult process. On the weekends, he hitchhikes to Buxton, searching for suitable hay fields from Andy’s “directions”. After several months of wandering the rural town roads, he does find a field with a rock wall on the correct side. It even has a black rock in it. Under this rock, he finds a letter addressed to him from “Peter Stevens” inviting him to join Peter at the town he had told him about. With the letter are twenty fifty dollar bills ($1000). The story ends with Red violating his parole to follow Andy to Mexico…..and they meet at the seashore……
gopucreator 