The Shawshank Redemption

Welcome back to Morgan Freeman month. Today, I will look at one of the classic films that came out in 1994, and another one of my favorites, “The Shawshank Redemption.” This is another film that Morgan Freeman will always be remembered for. It’s about time, patience and loyalty – not erotic qualities, maybe, but they get to you during the underground progress of this story. The story revolves around two men that have been sentenced for life in prison. They meet, become friends, and fight off their depression. 

Morgan Freeman plays “Red” Redding, who is also narrating the story, and has been in Shawshank Prison for a long time and its head businessman. He is the one who can get his fellow inmates anything they ask for. You name it and he'll get it, like cigarettes to candy. In the case of his newly arrived inmate, he asks for a little rock pick. When the prisoners see the bus arrive with the new prisoners, they all make a bet on who will and will not cry during their first night in prison. Red makes a bet on the new man, Andy Dufresne, played by a great actor, Tim Robbins, who Ebert describes looking like “a babe in the woods."

Andy doesn’t cry, and Red loses the cigarettes he bet on. Much to surprise of everyone, Andy brings out this great determination and strength which makes him remain optimistic. Andy was a banker before being imprisoned, and he’s been accused of murder. What’s surprising is that Andy is innocent, and there are a handful of details in this case, but after some time they don’t seem real. All that counts inside the prison is its own society – who is strong and who isn’t – and the measured passage of time.

Red looks like he is also in for life. Sporadically, maybe by the decades, he goes in front of the parole board, and they look at the length of his sentence (20 years, 30 years) and ask him if he thinks he has been changed. His answer is, “Oh, most surely, yes.” Ebert mentioned that, “but the fire goes out of his assurances as the years march past, and there is the sense that he has been institutionalized -- that, like another old lifer who kills himself after being paroled, he can no longer really envision life on the outside.”

Since Red is narrating, he speaks for every single one of the prisoners, who see courage and honesty in Andy that stays with him throughout his time. He is not a kiss up, and won’t back down. Another good thing about Andy is that he is not a violent person, he's just really sure of himself. The warden, played by Bob Gunton, uses Andy as a challenge and resource when he finds that Andy knows everything about bookkeeping and tax preparation, which leads him to moving out of his prison job in the library to the warden’s office. At the office, Ebert mentions that “he sits behind an adding machine and keeps tabs on the warden’s ill-gotten gains.” Andy becomes really popular that he eventually does the taxes and pension plans for most of the officials in the system.

There are moments where Andy gets cold beers for his friends who are working on the roof, or becoming friends with the old prison librarian, played by James Whitmore, or when he goes too far and is thrown into solitary confinement. An amazing fact for not only the characters in the film, but for the audience watching this film as well, is that he takes the good, the bad, and the ugly as part of something only Andy is able to see clearly. With Red, we get the feeling that he has been inside the prison walls for a long time, like Whitmore’s character. However, Whitmore’s character is granted parole, but cannot stand being outside the prison walls after being in them for so long, that he commits suicide.

One of the heaviest moments in the film is when Andy is working in the prison laundry, he is regularly beaten by a “bull queer” gang known as “the Sisters,” lead by Bogs, played by Mark Rolston. When one of the attacks nearly kills Andy, the chief guard Byron Hadley, played by Clancy Brown, really gives a thrashing to Bogs and sends him to another prison. Then the gang leaves Andy alone.

The camaraderie between Andy and Red is essential to the way the story is told. This is not a “prison drama” in any way possible, not is it about violent, riots or melodrama. “Redemption” is in the title for a reason. Ebert notes, “The movie is based on a story, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, by Stephen King, which is quite unlike most of King's work.” The scare factor in this is not the supernatural kind, but that which flows from realization than 10, 20, 30 years of man’s life have unfolded in the same, constant prison routine.

Frank Darabont debuts as director to this movie, and he pains the prison in plain grays and shadows so when main events do happen, they seem to have a life of their own.

Andy keeps his thoughts to himself. Therefore, Red is the main part of the story: His close observation of Andy, through the years, gives the way we see change and keep up with the measure of his influence on his fellow inmates. Every time there is something else happening, hidden or secret, everything is revealed at the end.

 “The Shawshank Redemption” is not a depressing story, although from what I have given, it does sound like that. Just to let you know, there are plenty of moments of life and humor and the friendship that grows between Red and Andy. Also, we can tell when there will be excitement and suspense when not expected, but the film is, as Ebert stated, “mostly an allegory about holding onto a sense of personal worth, despite everything.” If the film is maybe a little slow in the middle, maybe that was also the idea to give us a sense of the slow passing of time, before the beauty of the final deliverance. Just like how Red says in this film, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

Stay tuned for next week in my “Morgan Freeman month,” but make sure to check out “The Shawshank Redemption” whenever you get the chance.