The Shawshank Redemption (1994): The Triumph and Joy Of Worthy Perseverance

What would you do if you were wrongly condemned to a life in a prison with no way out? Would you angrily rebel against the injustice? Would you give up and withdraw into a shell, accepting your lot is life as hopeless? Would you begin to live the convict life, thinking that only the strong survive, and so you’d better become the strongest, meanest, most aggressive person you could be? Would you surrender to the sadistic power of the strong ones, and become the pathetic toy of the animal-types who hold the power? Or would you try to find another way to live, patiently waiting, utilizing what skills you possessed, and looking for a window of opportunity when you might seize the time and find a way into a life of justice and dignity once again?

This is the intriguing overarching question explored in delicious depth by the tribute to the undying power of human hope in the wonderful movie The Shawshank Redemption. Cold, hard, realistic, but ultimately very human, we journey through this story from ugly, gray despair to the bright sunshine of satisfying victory.

Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), a worker in the financial business, is an honest, hard-working man with a wife and, apparently, a good life. But then his wife has an affair. When Andy’s wife and her lover are discovered shot to death in their bed of adultery, Andy becomes the main suspect. Suspicion soon gains momentum into assumed guilt when it comes to light that Andy had discovered the affair, and then had an impassioned argument with his wife. There was a trial. Andy fervently maintains his innocence of the crime, but circumstantial evidence adds its weight to the motive, and the criminal justice system then leads to a guilty verdict. People probably took joy in seeing a big-shot executive type getting his just due. Andy’s sentence is that he spend the rest of his life in Shawshank Prison. Two back-to-back life sentences underscore his doomed future. Thus our tale is set.

The movie was based on a short story, “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”, written by one of the most skillful storytellers of our time, Stephen King. King’s novella was translated into a screenplay by Frank Darabont (who also directed the film), filmed by Lester/Castle Rock Entertainment, and released by Columbia Pictures in 1994. Its main focus is what happens to Andy when he lives out his life in prison.

The Shawshank Redemption then becomes involved with many aspects of Andy’s existence. The themes of despair, the harsh realities of a life in prison, friendship in times of deep emotional pain, and ultimately, hope, become the focus.

At first, Andy is alone, a stranger in a strange land; a middle-class businessman suddenly thrust into the dog-eat-dog world of self-centered, hardened criminals, who prey on him. He is assaulted and derided. But his instincts for survival cause him to realize the inevitable: the only way he is going to make it is to join in friendship with at least some of these human beings whose kind of life he has never known, and probably never dreamed he would know. So he makes a very smart decision. He begins a friendship with some of these condemned men he feels are worthy of trust. The most significant one of the lot is Ellis “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman), a black man who is to Andy’s eyes a career criminal, yet whom on some level in Andy’s mind seems to be worthy of his confidence. It is Andy’s decision to become allies with Red that begins to kindle in his mind a glimmer of hope. He sees that Red, no matter what he thinks of him in his first impressions, is a man who is surviving, and Andy knows that his own survival may depend on what he learn from Red and share with him.

Red, on the other hand, sees something in Andy too. Red might have dismissed Andy as some snobbish white aristocrat from the privileged class who deserves every bit of payback-for-being-white-and-privileged pain that will be coming to him, but somehow Red, in his own street-wise wisdom, finds deep within Andy a kindred spirit that somehow lifts his own hopes as well. Freeman’s “Red”, incidentally, provides the voiceover all through the movie that tells us of his friend’s progression through his ordeal in the prison.

Andy shows us in his prison experience a man who then, having an ally and others who are in sympathy with him, becomes adjusted to prison life and determines to be resilient and to in fact overcome its adversities if he can. He becomes One Of The Guys in a little group of convicts who must make their way together day by day. They watch each other’s backs. Lesson One: in trouble, don’t try to go it alone; find a friend, or friends.

When the chances come, Andy, bit by bit, begins to open up and to use his honest character and skills to raise himself up to a respected status. His background in business and his extensive academic education enable him to serve the business needs of the guards and the warden in the prison. Yet he then turns around and uses the fruits of his status and labors to try to elevate, as best he can, the quality of life for his fellow convicts within the prison. If he had only been trying to work his way into some honored position for the sake of his own selfish interests, his convict friends might have turned on him, called him a boot-licker, and have abandoned him. But because they can see that he is not doing what he is doing for himself alone, but to help them as well, they deepen their respect for him. Lesson Two: if you have skills that can help, don’t help yourself alone, but help the people around you, if possible.

Andy knows a secret though, one the convicts have suspected all along. The prison is run by people who are viciously corrupt. They are using the prison and its systems for their own brutal and selfish aims. While the movie makes it absolutely clear that many of the prisoners are violent men who will hurt and kill with little remorse, it also shows us that the penal officials are in their own way just as cold, deadly, and selfish. And Andy is continually reminded by those in the official hierarchy he helps that he will always be nothing more, really, than simply another despicable con. But he goes on, day-to-day, doing good, without letting either the adversity of the prison environment or the callousness of the warden and guards grind his spirit down. Lesson Three: hang in there and do good, even when things seem hopeless and it looks like you’re going nowhere. Don’t give in to cynicism.

However, Andy, ever in contact with his friend Red, contrives on his own a plan to change everything- at least for himself and those who have helped him. And with a little assistance from a picture of movie star Rita Hayworth, he moves toward a reckoning. And in the end, he achieves his goal, in a stunning way. Lesson Four: sometimes, if you don’t give up, you actually make it.

While the story of Andy’s progression in his prison life is absolutely captivating (no pun intended), personally I found the story of Red’s parallel progression equally compelling. A scene that stands out in my memory of the movie is that when Red, an old man, after repeatedly being rejected for parole, once more goes before the parole board and is asked what he thinks about what he has done. I paraphrase the script, but he says something like, “When I think about the wayward young man I was back when I committed my crime, I wish I could go to that young man, look into his soul, and tell him that he is only fooling himself, and that he should take another pathway.” When I think of so many young people who have been caught up in crime simply because they felt they had to go that way to get ahead, this is an incredibly poignant and telling scene.

Morgan Freeman’s voice, facial expression, and tone speak volumes about a tortured human spirit who knows what led him to do what he has done, and completely understands the wrong he has done, that he is sorrowful about it, that he feels he has paid for his crimes, and he wishes he could now, late in life, have a bit of mercy which might allow him to have some taste of freedom wherein he could live out the days he has remaining in peace. The parole board swiftly and heartlessly denies this chance at new life for him.

It is left to Andy, then, to try to give Red a fairer destiny.

This film’s story is told in a way that draws you in, and makes you feel you are right there alongside these men, and that you understand completely what they are facing and feeling. It does not excuse criminal behavior in any way, but helps us to understand that the way we try to deal with criminals in the “modern” criminal justice system is sometimes very wrong. And it suggests that persons behind bars are still people with the possibility of actual positive change if they are exposed to compassion of a nature that is fitting.

The larger story, of course, is about one man’s defiance not only of unjust circumstances which cast him down from what is right into a hellish and unfair situation, but of his personal defiance of the temptation to give up and surrender to what he knows is wrong. This is done, however, in a manner which is subtle and without fanfare, so that it seems dignified and unobtrusively authentic. The quiet use of humor and irony in Darabont’s script is masterful, and underscores the growing momentum which leads, finally, to the redemption implied in the film’s title.

The actors we see as good perform their parts with a clarity of understatement that keeps us enthralled, while the villains are stark in their appropriately stringent meanness. Robbins is most effective, completely understanding his role, and never varying into overacting into blatant heroics. Freeman is a giant in the film, soft and yet strong, and after many have seen this film they have come to a deepened respect for him that carries over into many of his other fine films. The Shawshank Redemption’s director-screenwriter Frank Darabont demonstrates what a creative person can do when doing it well, both penning the plot and bringing it into life in the filming and editing itself.

This is one of the modern classic films, and has been accounted, over the years, as one of the best films of all time. Something of a sleeper, it ultimately does not depend on special effects, shocking images, and breathy sexual scenes to carry its story. Its strength, like the best of films, lies in its exploration of humanity, and how humans will do things that excel above the norm, and it therefore raises the bar of inspiration for all of us. Every mature person should see this one.

Five Stars: *****