The Shawshank Redemption

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The Shawshank Redemption

IMDB 9.2/10 (221,879 votes)
top 250: #2
Directed by Frank Darabont
Produced by Niki Marvin
Written by Frank Darabont
Starring Tim Robbins
Morgan Freeman
Bob Gunton
Clancy Brown
Music by Thomas Newman
Distributed by Columbia Pictures (later Warner Bros.)
Release date(s) September 10, 1994
Running time 142 min.
Language English
Budget $25,000,000
IMDb profile

The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 movie, written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The film stars Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne and Morgan Freeman as Ellis "Red" Redding.

The plot of Shawshank revolves around Andy Dufresne's life in prison after being convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover. Despite a poor showing in its theatrical release (partially due to competition from other then-current films such as Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, and Speed), Shawshank enjoyed a remarkable life on cable television, home video, and DVD. It has since been widely recognized as one of the most beloved, inspirational, and popular movies ever made.

In 1999, film critic Roger Ebert listed Shawshank on his "Great Movies" list,[1] and in reader polls by the British film magazine Empire, the film ranked 5th in 2004 and 1st in 2006 on the lists for greatest movie of all time. The film has also repeatedly been voted by the registered users of the Internet Movie Database as one of the greatest movies ever made. According to the database's list of "Top 250 Movies of All Time",[2] it is one of only two movies with at least a 9.0 average rating (the other being The Godfather), and it has the most votes of any of the movies on the list. At points it has been the highest rated film on IMDB and the Yahoo movies database.[3]

In the 1994 Academy Awards the movie was nominated for seven awards (Best Picture, Best Actor–Morgan Freeman, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Sound) but, in the shadow of 1995's big winner Forrest Gump, failed to win a single one.

Darabont secured the film adaptation rights in 1987 from Stephen King after impressing the author with his short film adaptation of "The Woman in the Room" in 1983. This is one of the more famous Dollar Deals made by King with aspiring filmmakers.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The movie begins with Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) on trial for the murder of his wife and her lover, a crime of which he claims to be innocent in spite of some damning evidence. He is sentenced to serve two consecutive life sentences at Shawshank, a fictitious prison in Maine. In Shawshank he eventually befriends Red (Morgan Freeman) and several other prisoners (including Brooks Hatlen, played by James Whitmore).

Andy asks Red for the Rita Hayworth poster
Enlarge
Andy asks Red for the Rita Hayworth poster

In his first few years in prison, Andy endures injustice, mistreatment by the guards and repeated abuse at the hands of fellow prisoners (most notably repeated beatings, rapes, and rape attempts by a group of aggressive inmates known as "the sisters"). Andy's pre-prison, professional life as a banker and his knowledge of accounting and income taxes bring him to the attention of the captain of the guard, Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown) and eventually to Warden Sam Norton (Bob Gunton). Andy's financial knowledge earns him some freedom from mistreatment, but he also becomes involved in Norton's illegal money-laundering operations.

Time passes. Brooks is eventually released from prison, but after spending over 50 years behind bars, the elderly convict finds that the normal world is no place for him, and, in a letter to his friends at the prison, declares that he's tired of being afraid all the time; "I've decided not to stay," Brooks closes. Having carved his name into the wall in the half-way house, he hangs himself.

A young prisoner, Tommy (Gil Bellows), enters Shawshank in the 1960s, and tells Andy that he has information that could free Andy, or at least get him a new trial. It is only at this point that it is made totally explicit that Andy is in fact innocent of the murders, as he has maintained. Andy approaches the warden for help, but the warden is unwilling to lose Andy's financial assistance with his illicit schemes or being exposed and sends Andy to solitary confinement. While Andy is in solitary, the warden has Tommy killed.

Unbeknownst to everyone, Andy has long been working on his escape. Each night he has chipped away at the softening rock in his cell to form an escape tunnel that eventually leads to a 500-yard-long sewage pipe and freedom. Andy, who had a fascination with geology in his former life, uses a small rock hammer and hides his work behind a poster of Rita Hayworth, hence the original title of King's story, "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption". Once outside Andy retrieves all the illegally obtained money he has laundered for the warden and escapes to Zihuatanejo, Mexico. He also sends information to the local newspaper implicating the warden and chief guard. The warden commits suicide before he can be arrested.

Red is eventually paroled and sent to a halfway house (the same used by the late Brooks). While Red is initially as despairing as Brooks, he decides to take Andy up on the offer made to him in prison. Red finds a box, hidden by Andy in a hayfield, that contains enough money for him to leave Maine and join Andy in Mexico.

[edit] Differences from the book

On the whole, the film is a faithful adaptation of the Stephen King book. For a general description of the plot, see Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The director's commentary on the special DVD edition explains each change individually. However, there are a number of differences (with some purely oriented towards minimizing the number of characters, or for added effect on the viewers):

  • The Indian Normaden that shares Andy's cell for a period does not appear in the film.
  • The scene where Norton inspects Andy's cell for contraband without finding the rock hammer (and they quote scripture at each other) does not appear in the novel.
  • In the novel, the lead guards come and go. In the film, Byron Hadley is the lead guard until the very end.
  • Similarly, in the novel, when Andy comes to Shawshank, the warden is a man named Dunahy; he is replaced by a man named Stammas; who is himself replaced by Sam Norton. In the film, Norton is warden throughout.
  • In both the film and the novel, Warden Norton has embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars, but in the novel, Norton quietly resigns after Andy's escape whereas, in the film, when Andy escapes and makes Norton's crimes known, Norton commits suicide in his office rather than allow himself to be arrested.
  • Many of the cons, such as Heywood, Floyd, and "Fat Ass", were either not included or much less involved in the novel than they are in the movie.
  • Andy received the poster of Rita Hayworth before being beaten up by The Sisters (a group of aggressive rapists) and spending a month in the infirmary. The poster was also replaced by that of Marilyn Monroe in 1955 instead of 1957.
  • The tarring of the roof occurred in 1950 and not 1949.
  • Red never becomes assistant librarian in the novel.
  • Brooks' threatening to cut the throat of another prisoner to avoid being paroled only appears in the film. In both the novel and the film, Brooks is paroled and leaves Shawshank. His suicide soon after leaving prison only occurs in the film.
  • In the novel, Andy sells off all his assets while still on trial. Together with a friend, he sets up a false identity and transfers all assets there. In the film, Andy himself sets up the false identity so that he can create accounts to launder money for the warden; Andy then drains these accounts upon his escape.
  • Andy's prison identity is changed from "81433-SHNK" to "37927"
  • In the novel, Tommy is transferred to a low-security prison, rather than being killed, in exchange for not talking.
  • In the novel, Tommy came to Shawshank in 1962, not 1965. His child was a three-year-old boy, not a baby girl as in the film.
  • In the novel it was not Red who informed Tommy about Glenn Quentin, it was another con named Charlie Lathrop.
  • Andy only spent twenty days in solitary instead of a full month. The scene where Norton visits him in "the hole" was not in the book.
  • Red is an Irish-American in the book but in the movie he is black, although when asked by Andy why he is called "Red" he jokingly replies "Maybe it's because I'm Irish."
  • The endings are slightly different. The novel ends with Red en route to find Andy in Mexico but not sure that he will, ending with the words "I hope." The movie shows Red finding Andy on the beach in Mexico.
  • In the novel, Andy comes to Shawshank Prison in 1948, not 1946. Andy's escape also occurs 9 years earlier, in 1966, whereas in the novel, Andy escaped in 1975.
  • In the book, Andy goes through two rock hammers while making his hole. He only uses one in the movie.
  • Andy had a small frame and wore gold rimmed spectacles in the novel, he didn't wear any glasses until late in the film.
  • Andy never gave Red a harmonica, instead he gave him polished rocks that he collected from the exercise yard.
  • The men's lengthy discussion about institutionalization was not in the novel. However, Red does mention a bit about this topic at one point.
  • The scene where the guard beats the new 'fish' so badly that he dies after being left in the infirmary over night never happened in the novel.
  • The 'record playing' incident never happened in the novel.
  • Jake was not a crow but a pigeon in the novel. What becomes of the bird after Brooks sets him free is uncertain in the movie, but in the book, he is found dead in the courtyard shortly after his release.
  • Red and his friends did not give a sack of rocks as a present to Andy in the novel.
  • Red was paroled after only thirty-eight years instead of forty.
  • The prison yard is never asphalted in the movie.
  • Every year in Shawshank, Andy buys a bottle of Jack Daniels before his birthday and Christmas. He drinks a few shots and gives it back to Red to pass it around the other inmates. In the movie Andy says he "gave up drinking."
  • Andy did not steal warden Norton's shoes and clothes in the novel, nor did he ask Heywood for a line of rope.
  • The famous line "Get busy living or get busy dying" was never spoken by Andy in the novel, though it does occur as part of Red's narration.

[edit] Cast and crew

Morgan Freeman as Red and Tim Robbins as Andy
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Morgan Freeman as Red and Tim Robbins as Andy

[edit] Cast

[edit] Crew

[edit] Themes

[edit] Hope

Red and Andy reunited in the last scene
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Red and Andy reunited in the last scene

A major theme of the film is hope, symbolized in the music, but contained throughout the story of the film (even more so than the novel). Using a subdued messianic motif, Stephen King uses Andy Dufresne to bring hope and redemption to the fallen world of Shawshank Prison and its convicted felons — especially to Red.

The character of Brooks is in contrast to Red because the former had become "institutionalized." Red says when discussing Brooks:

"These prison walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them. That's institutionalized. They send you here for life, that's exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyways."

Brooks had lost all hope and accepted life at Shawshank as normal, was unable to integrate into society when he was released, and consequently committed suicide. (Symbolically, the novel represented this concept with a bird that was raised in captivity but was found dead in the prison courtyard when it was released into the wild; a scene that was in early drafts of the movie.)

In fact, Red is headed down the same path as Brooks until Andy changes his course by bringing him hope. Andy is thus Red's redeemer (in the religious sense of the word) because he saves Red from the sad end that Brooks met. In a discussion with Red, Andy links music and hope in a better life:

"You need music so you don't forget...that there are places in the world that aren't made out of stone. That...there's something inside that they can't get to, that they can't touch, that's yours."

As long as the inmates can remember what it is like to be free, and to feel the world on their own terms, they have hope. If someone is in the prison too long, like Brooks, the knowledge of freedom is lost, and a sort of dependence on the walls is formed that leads to Brooks' tragic end. Red initially resists Andy's admonitions and testimony in the power of hope, but by the end of the film he is convinced. The last line has Red confessing, "I hope," and the film (but not the novel) shows that his hope was well-founded because he finally rejoins his redeemer in paradise, represented by the Pacific beach which Andy described to Red.

[edit] Friendship

In several of Morgan Freeman's interviews promoting the film's release, he earnestly described the film as "a love story," a tale of the brotherly love and tight bond of friendship that came to grow between two people, and in an interview with Charlie Rose that is included on the tenth anniversary DVD, Freeman, Robbins, and Darabont discuss the theme of friendship as it is depicted over the course of the film as Red and Andy develop the close, long-term friendship.

[edit] Integrity

Roger Ebert suggests that the integrity of Andy Dufresne is an important theme in the story line,[4] especially in prison, where integrity is lacking. Andy is an individual of integrity (here refering to adherence to a code of morality) among a host of criminals with little integrity.[5]

[edit] Parallels

The Alexandre Dumas novel, The Count of Monte Cristo, which is prominently mentioned in the film, shares several striking similaries with Shawshank. Dumas' novel follows a falsely imprisoned man who later makes an escape mapped out over many years after acquiring a friendship that helped him spiritually survive while incarcerated. After escaping, he procures a hidden treasure which he became aware of in prison, and executes a plan to exact revenge on those who imprisoned him.

Similarly, Shawshank bears several parallels to the 1979 Clint Eastwood movie Escape from Alcatraz in which Eastwood's character, like Andy Dufresne, took small pieces of his cell walls and discreetly discarded them while spending time in the yard, spurned advances of a fellow inmate, and was assigned to a small library.

[edit] Christian interpretations

Some critics have interpreted the film as a Christian parable, and indeed some Christian reviewers have referred to it as a film "true to Christian principles."[6]

The character Andy has some striking (albeit imperfect) parallels to the most famous messianic figure, Jesus of Nazareth. Both are condemned though innocent, both undergo a version of death, resurrection, and ascension, and both bring hope and redemption to their followers. Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine, whereas Andy's first wonder was convincing the guards to give the prisoners beer. After Andy escapes, the famous scene shows him standing in the rain, arms outstretched like Christ on the cross. Later, his friends become like Jesus' twelve apostles, remembering their time with Andy and telling others about him. The warden also exhibits parallels to the hypocritical religious leaders who opposed Jesus. The writer/director Frank Darabont was very gratified by the support for his film from the religious community, and he was pleased that they were not offended by the warden, who was the only explicitly religious character in the film, and that they saw him as the hypocrite he was intended to be.

Despite the parallels, in the director's commentary track on the tenth anniversary DVD, Darabont denies any intent to create such a parable and calls such interpretations of the film "fantastic" (though it is unclear whether he meant by this word that the interpretations were creative and imaginative, or superb and remarkable, or both).

[edit] References in popular culture

  • In the Stephen King novella, Apt Pupil, Arthur Denker mentions that the banker who helped him buy stocks was named Andy Dufresne, and in the movie adaptation of the King novel Dolores Claiborne, the titular character threatens her abusive husband with a "term at Shawshank."
  • The animated series Drawn Together has twice parodied the movie, both times using the Wooldoor Sockbat character as a doppelgänger for Brooks Hatlen's character. In "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II", Wooldoor hangs himself in exactly the same way Brooks did. In "The Lemon-AIDS Walk", after being seized by mall security for stealing candy, Wooldoor finds himself unable to adjust to life on the outside again after being released. Wooldoor's inner monologue about his plight is almost word-for-word the same as what appears in the movie.
  • The main theme from the movie's music score (a set of piano chords in slow succession), written by Thomas Newman, appears in Seal's song My Vision as a background loop.
  • The same theme from the score also appears in Jakatta's song American Dream, on the Visions album. The same album also features the theme in a remix of Seal's My Vision as well as in the trailer for All the King's Men. Some of the music played during the end credits also appear in the theatrical trailer for Brokeback Mountain.

[edit] Trivia

  • The novel appears in Stephen King's Different Seasons, which also contains The Body, which was made into the film Stand By Me, and Apt Pupil, which was also made into a film by the same name. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption appears under the Spring section of the book under the heading "Hope springs eternal," which is also the name of a documentary on the special edition DVD.
  • Director Frank Darabont went on to direct The Green Mile, based on another work by Stephen King. Darabont and others have joked that this makes Darabont the most exclusive director in history, as his oeuvre encompassed "all Stephen King novels that take place in prisons in the 1930s".
  • Shawshank was filmed in and around the city of Mansfield, Ohio, located in north-central Ohio. The prison featured in the film is the old, abandoned Ohio State Reformatory immediately north of downtown Mansfield. The Reformatory buildings have been used in several other films, including Harry and Walter Go to New York, Air Force One and Tango and Cash. Most of the prison yard has now been demolished to make room for expansion of the adjacent Mansfield Correctional Facility, but the Reformatory's Gothic-style ("Castle Dracula") Administration Building remains standing and, due to its prominent use in films, has become a tourist attraction. Several scenes were also shot in Portland, ME. The real warden of the Mansfield Correctional Facility had a cameo appearance in Shawshank as the prisoner seated directly behind Tommy on his bus ride to prison.
  • The young photo of Red on his parole forms is of Morgan Freeman's son, Alfonso, who also is seen in the yard when Andy's load of prisoners is first dropped off, shouting enthusiastically "Fresh Fish! Fresh Fish" whilst reeling in an imaginary line. Alfonso later played a parody of his father's character, Red, in a short spoof titled The Sharktank Redemption, available on the second disc of the 10th anniversary DVD.
  • To escape, Andy crawls through five hundred yards of a sewage pipe that lead to a small river outside of the prison. Red describes five hundred yards as the equal of five football fields and 'just shy of half a mile.' While five hundred yards does equal five football fields, it is not even one-third of a mile (about 587 yards).

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

[edit] References

  • Director's commentary on the special edition DVD.
  • A review from The Washington Post
  • A review from PrisonFlicks.com
  • A review by James Berardinelli
  • "The Shawshank Redemption The Shooting Script" Darabont, Frank Newmarket Press ©1996, introduction King, Stephen

[edit] External links

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