The Shawshank Redemption

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For the novella of the same name, see Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.
The Shawshank Redemption
Directed by Frank Darabont
Produced by Niki Marvin
Written by Frank Darabont (screenplay)
Stephen King (original novella)
Starring Tim Robbins
Morgan Freeman
Bob Gunton
Clancy Brown
William Sadler
Gil Bellows
James Whitmore
Music by Thomas Newman
Cinematography Roger Deakins
Editing by Richard Francis-Bruce
Distributed by Columbia Pictures (later Warner Bros. Pictures)
Release date(s) September 10, 1994
Running time 142 minutes
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 box office reception (partially due to competition from the commercial success of films such as Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, and Speed), Shawshank received favourable reviews from critics and enjoyed a remarkable life on cable television, home video, and DVD, and continues to be noticed by popular culture. It is consistently ranked amongst the finest movies of all time.

Contents

[edit] Plot

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Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Andy Duframe is sentenced to serve two consecutive life sentences at Shawshank for the murder of his wife and her lover, although he claims he is innocent. There, Red tries to persuade a parole board that he has been rehabilitated, but fails as with every previous hearing. The other inmates gather around the new arrivals coming off the bus, cheering in glee to make them uncomfortable. Red bets that Andy will have a nervous break-down. Warden Norton welcomes the new arrivals and stands idly by as the captain of the guard, Byron Hadley beats an arrival who asks when they eat. The inmates are marched naked to their cells, and one new arrival breaks down and is savagely beaten by Hadley for it. The arrival dies in the infirmary, because no one is around to take care of him.

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

In his first few years in prison, Andy endures repeated beatings, gang rapings, and gang rape attempts by a group of aggressive inmates known as the sisters, led by Bogs. Andy keeps to himself until he befriends Red, who has connections to obtain various items, and several other prisoners including Brooks Hatlen. Red arranges for himself, Dufresne, and others to have their names chosen for work tarring the roof of a prison building. As they work, Andy offers to help Hadley with his taxes. Despite Hadley threatening to throw him off the roof, Andy merely recommends that Hadley trust the money to his wife, because the IRS will not tax a gift to a spouse. Andy volunteers to help Hadley with his taxes, in exchange for three beers for each man working; Hadley complies.

Andy's former life as a banker and his knowledge of accounting and income taxes eventually come to the attention of every guard in the prison, and, finally, the Warden. His financial knowledge earns him freedom from mistreatment by other prisoners, but he also becomes deeply involved in Norton's illegal money-laundering operations. The Warden keeps a safe behind an embroidered plaque by his wife, reading "Thy Judgement cometh, and that right soon." When working for the Warden, Andy creates a false identity so the Warden can hide the money laundered. Time passes. Brooks's parole is approved, but he doesn't want to leave prison and even threatens to kill another inmate in order to stay at Shawshank. The old man 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 hangs himself, writing in a letter to his inmates that he was tired of being afraid all the time. In his memory, Andy makes repeated letters once a week to the State Senate to get funding for the prison library, finally, receiving hundreds of books and several records. While getting the books organized in the Warden's office, Andy comes across a record of the Mozart opera Le Nozze di Figaro (Marriage of Figaro) and plays Sull'aria, a duettino. He locks all doors into the room and turns on the intercom and all public address systems; the music fills the entire prison. The Warden arrives and orders Andy to turn off the record player, Andy defiantly increases the volume. Hadley then breaks through the door and apprehends Dufresne; Andy is then sent to solitary confinement.

A young prisoner, Tommy, enters Shawshank in the 1960s, and Andy helps him try to get a G.E.D. Tommy tells Andy that he has met the man who actually killed his wife and her lover; this could be used to free him, or at least get him a new trial. Andy approaches the warden for help, but the warden is unwilling to lose Andy's financial assistance with his illicit schemes or risk being exposed and sends Andy to solitary confinement for a month, which is longer than the prisoners seem to know of. While Andy is in solitary, Tommy passes his G.E.D. with a C+, but the warden has him killed before he can pass on any information. The Warden then gives Andy another month in solitary. After his release from solitary confinement, Andy's disposition is visibly changed; he is now more sullen than before. He tells Red that, if he ever makes parole, to go to a field in Maine and look for a rock made of volcanic glass in a granite stone wall. After this, he orders a length of rope, stirring worry among his friends that he will kill himself. That night, he works with the Warden's illegal financing, and is ordered to clean a suit and shine a pair of dress shoes.

The following day, Andy doesn't come out of his cell for morning roll call. An officer goes to check and finds that Andy has disappeared. The Warden has no knowledge of this absence until he finds Andy's ragged shoes in place of the dress shoes; as soon as he finds them, the siren sounds, signaling Dufresne's escape. While questioning Red, the Warden blasphemes and begins throwing Andy's whittled stones around the room. However, when he throws one at a poster of Raquel Welch on the wall, it passes through, rather than bouncing off of the stone wall. The Warden rips the poster away, revealing a hole in the wall just large enough for a man to fit through. At this point, how Andy escapes is revealed; from his first night with the rock hammer, Andy has chipped away at the wall, using the poster of Rita Hayworth to hide it. The night of his escape, Dufresne secretly replaced the Warden's records of finances with something else, placing the duplicates in the Warden's safe. He wore the suit underneath his clothes as he came back to his cell, and switched his own shoes out. After placing the records, the suit, and a chess set into a watertight plastic bag, he bound it to his foot with the rope he previously ordered and then Andy crawled through the hole and found himself in the prison plumbing system. He broke his way into the sewage pipe and crawled for five-hundred yards down the sewage pipe into a nearby run-off stream. Andy assumes the identity of the phantom and took $370,000 out of the Warden's accounts, and also forwards information on Tommy's murder to the local newspaper. The Warden reads the story and quickly opens the safe. Inside is Dufresne's bible. A note from Andy is scrawled in the cover; "You were right; salvation lay within." Further in, fittingly beginning in the book of Exodus, pages are cut in the shape of a rock hammer, where Andy had hidden it. The police arrest Hadley, but Norton loads a gun and commits suicide.

At Red's latest parole, rather than eagerly asking for parole, he remarks that he doesn't care what happens to him, feeling that rehabilitation "is a bullshit word". His parole is approved, and he is sent to a halfway house, to the same room where Brooks had died. After working as a grocery store employee, he remembers what Andy had asked for him to do. Red goes to the field in Maine, digs under the volcanic glass rock and finds a box, hidden by Andy, that contains enough money for him to leave Maine and join Andy in Mexico. Before leaving for Mexico, Red carves into the wall next to Brooks' final message, "So was Red." Red meets Andy once again on the Pacific shoreline.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Cast and crew

[edit] Cast

[edit] Crew

[edit] Production

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. Darabont later directed The Green Mile, which was based on another work by Stephen King.

The Shawshank Redemption 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, Maine. 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 photo of a young Red on his parole forms is that of Morgan Freeman's son, Alfonso. Alfonso is also 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.

[edit] Interpretations

[edit] Integrity

Roger Ebert suggests that the integrity of Andy Dufresne is an important theme in the story line,[1] especially in prison, where integrity is lacking. Andy is an individual of integrity (here referring to adherence to a code of morality) among a host of criminals with little integrity.[2]

[edit] Christian interpretations

Some critics have interpreted the film as a Christian parable, and some Christian reviewers have referred to it as a film "true to Christian principles."[3]

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."

[edit] Critical Reaction

In 1999, film critic Roger Ebert listed Shawshank on his "Great Movies" list,[4] and in reader polls by the film magazine Empire, the film ranked 5th in 2004 and 1st in 2006 on the lists for greatest movie of all time.[1][2] 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",[5] it is one of only two movies with a 9.1 average rating (the other being The Godfather), and it has the most votes of any of the movies on the list. At times, it was the highest rated film on IMDB and the Yahoo movies database.[6][7]

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.

[edit] References in popular culture

[edit] References

  1. ^ "The 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time", Empire, 2004-01-30, pp. 97.
  2. ^ "The 201 Greatest Movies Of All Time", Empire, 2006-01-27, pp. 100-1.
  • Director's commentary on the special edition DVD.
  • A review from The Washington Post
  • A review from PrisonFlicks.com
  • "The Shawshank Redemption The Shooting Script" Darabont, Frank Newmarket Press ©1996, introduction King, Stephen

[edit] Further reading

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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