The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Frank Darabont
Produced by	Niki Marvin
Written by	Screenplay: Frank Darabont Novella: Stephen King
Narrated by	Morgan Freeman James Whitmore
Starring	Tim Robbins Morgan Freeman
Music by	Thomas Newman
Cinematography	Roger Deakins
Editing by	Richard Francis-Bruce
Studio	Castle Rock Entertainment
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures (original) Warner Bros. (current)
Release date(s)	September 23, 1994 (1994-09-23)
Running time	142 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$25 million[1]
Gross revenue	$28,341,469[1]

The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 drama film written and directed by Frank Darabont. It is an adaptation of the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. Starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, the film portrays the story of Andy Dufresne, a banker who spends nearly two decades in Shawshank State Prison for the murder of his wife. During his time at the prison, he befriends a fellow inmate, Ellis "Red" Redding and finds himself protected by the guards after the warden begins using him in his money laundering operation.

Despite a lukewarm box office reception that was barely enough to cover its budget, the film received favorable reviews from critics, multiple award nominations, and has since enjoyed a remarkable life on cable television, VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray.^[2]

Plot

In 1947, a banker named Andrew "Andy" Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, based on strong circumstantial evidence. He is sentenced to two consecutive life sentences at Shawshank State Penitentiary in Maine, run by Warden Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton). Andy is quickly befriended by Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman), a fellow inmate serving a life sentence who has recently failed to gain parole. Andy finds Red has connections on the outside who can acquire contraband for the inmates. He first asks Red for a rock hammer, explaining that he wants to use it to maintain his rock collection hobby, which he uses to fashion a home-made chess set. He later asks Red for a full-size poster of Rita Hayworth for his wall, replacing the poster over the years with ones of Marilyn Monroe and Raquel Welch.

While doing manual labor, Andy overhears Captain of the Guards Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown) complain about having to pay taxes on a forthcoming inheritance. After explaining to Hadley how to circumvent the taxes legally, Andy's financial advice is soon sought by other guards at Shawshank and nearby prisons. Because of this, Andy is given a space to work on their financial matters alongside elderly inmate Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore). Hadley delivers a brutal beating to inmate Bogs (Mark Rolston), leader of "The Sisters," after his gang's sexual assault puts Andy in the infirmary; Bogs is paralyzed, and the remaining Sisters leave Andy alone. Andy uses his goodwill with the guards to expand the prison library. When one donation to the library provides him with the opera The Marriage of Figaro, he plays it over the public address system for all the inmates to hear, well-aware of the punishment of solitary confinement he will receive for the brief moment of bliss.

Warden Norton eventually creates a scheme to use prison labor for public works, undercutting the cost of skilled labor and receiving kickbacks for it. Norton has Andy launder the money under the false identity of Randall Stevens, in exchange for allowing Andy to keep his private cell and to continue maintaining the library. Meanwhile, Brooks, freed on parole, is unable to adjust to the outside world, and hangs himself; Andy dedicates the expanded library to him.

In 1965, Tommy Williams (Gil Bellows) is incarcerated on robbery charges. He is brought into Andy and Red's circle of friends, and Andy assists him in getting his GED. Upon learning of the crime of which Andy was convicted, Tommy reveals that one of his fellow inmates at another prison, Elmo Blatch (Bill Bolender), had claimed to have committed a nearly identical murder - this might prove that Andy, who had always maintained his innocence, was indeed not guily. Norton, fearing the end of the flow of money that Andy was looking after for him, and fearing that Andy might tell of his (Norton's) corruption if released, puts Andy into solitary confinement and has Tommy killed by Hadley, claiming he was an escapee.

Shortly after he returns to his regular cell block, Andy tells Red of his dream of living in Zihuatanejo, a Mexican-Pacific coastal town, and instructs Red, should he ever be freed, to visit a specific hayfield near Buxton to find something Andy had left there. The next day at roll call, Andy's cell is found empty. Norton, in anger, throws one of Andy's rocks at the poster of Raquel Welch; to everyone's astonishment, the rock tears through the poster, revealing a tunnel that Andy had dug with the rock hammer over the last two decades. A flashback shows that Andy, the night before, had switched the ledger book he had kept for Norton with his prison-issue Bible. Taking the ledger, his chess set and one of the warden's suits, he had made his escape through the tunnel and a narrow sewage drain during a thunderstorm. At the same time that Norton discovered Andy's escape, Andy used the identity of Randall Stevens to withdraw most of Norton's money from several banks, then sent evidence of Norton's corruption to a local newspaper. On the day the story runs, the police converge on the prison; Hadley is arrested while Norton commits suicide.

When Red finally receives parole after serving 40 years, he finds himself living in the same apartment in which Brooks committed suicide, and working at the same grocery store. Red decides to follow Andy's advice and visits Buxton. In the hayfield specified by Andy, he finds a cache of money and a note left by Andy, reminding him of Zihuatanejo. Red violates his parole and travels to Mexico, where he happily reunites with Andy on the beach.

Cast

• Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), the main character of the film. Tom Hanks, Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, Nicolas Cage, and Charlie Sheen were each considered for the role when the script was circulated in Hollywood. Hanks turned it down because he was committed to Forrest Gump, but he later worked with Darabont in The Green Mile.
• Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman), Andy's best friend and the film's narrator. Before Freeman was cast, Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Paul Newman, and Robert Redford were each considered for the role. Although written as a middle-aged Irishman with greying red hair (as in the novella), Darabont cast Freeman for his authoritative presence and demeanor, because he could not see anyone else as Red.^[3]
• Warden Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton), the warden of Shawshank and the primary antagonist. He has an obsession with the Bible and appears to be a devout Christian and reform-minded administrator.
• Heywood (William Sadler) a member of Red's gang of long-sentence convicts.
• Capt. Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown), chief of the guards and the other main antagonist. Hadley is an intemperate guard who thinks nothing of delivering beatings to the inmates to keep them in line. When cast for the role, Brown declined the offer to study real-life prison guards as preparation for his role, because he did not want to base it on any one person.^[4]
• Tommy Williams (Gil Bellows), a young convict whose experiences in a previous prison hold the truth about Andy's innocence.
• Bogs Diamond (Mark Rolston), the head of "The Sisters" gang and a prison rapist. He assaults Andy a number of times, but Hadley puts a stop to it by beating Bogs seriously enough to permanently paralyze him.
• Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore), prison librarian/trustee and one of the oldest convicts at Shawshank. Upon his release, he finds himself unable to cope with life on the outside, and commits suicide. Darabont cast Whitmore because he was one of his favorite character actors.^[3]

Themes

Chicago Sun-Times film reviewer Roger Ebert suggests that the integrity of Andy Dufresne is an important theme in the story line, especially in prison, where integrity is lacking.^[5]

The Shawshank Redemption is an allegory for maintaining one's feeling of self worth when placed in a hopeless position.^[5]

Angus C. Larcombe suggests that the film provides a great illustration of how characters can be free, even in prison, or unfree, even in freedom, based on one's outlook in life.^[6]

Production

Darabont secured the film adaptation rights from author Stephen King after impressing the author with his short film adaptation of "The Woman in the Room" in 1983. Although the two had become friends and maintained a pen-pal relationship, Darabont did not work with him until four years later in 1987, when he optioned to adapt Shawshank. This is one of the more famous Dollar Deals made by King with aspiring filmmakers. Darabont later directed The Green Mile (1999), which was based on another work about a prison by Stephen King, and then followed that up with an adaptation of King's novella The Mist.

Rob Reiner, who had previously adapted another King novella, The Body, into the movie Stand by Me (1986), offered $2.5 million in an attempt to write and direct Shawshank. He planned to cast Tom Cruise in the part of Andy and Harrison Ford as Red. Darabont seriously considered and liked Reiner's vision, but he ultimately decided it was his "chance to do something really great" by directing the film himself.^[3]

Though the story is set in Maine, the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio was used as a stand-in for the fictional Shawshank Prison.

Reception

Earning only $18 million on a $35 million budget,^[2] The Shawshank Redemption was a box office bomb.^[7]

The movie was nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1994 (Best Picture, Best Actor – Morgan Freeman, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Sound Mixing) but, in the shadow of 1994's big winner Forrest Gump, did not win a single one. The film's Academy Award nominations enabled it to fare well in the video sales and cable TV viewings. In June 1997, TNT, an American cable network, showed the film for the first time. The film was the first feature in TNT's Saturday Night New Classics. Since 1997, TNT has shown the film about once every two months.^[2]

Entertainment Weekly reviewer Owen Gleiberman praised the choice of scenery, writing that the "moss-dark, saturated images have a redolent sensuality" that makes the film very realistic.^[8] While praising Morgan Freeman's acting and oratory skills as making Red feel real, Gleiberman opined that with the "laconic-good-guy, neo-Gary Cooper role, Tim Robbins is unable to make Andy connect with the audience."^[8] Gleiberman gave the film a B minus.^[8]

In 1998, Shawshank was not listed in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies, but nine years later (2007), it was #72 on the revised list, outranking both Forrest Gump (#76) and Pulp Fiction (#94), the two most critically acclaimed movies from the year of Shawshank's release. In 1999, film critic Roger Ebert listed Shawshank on his "Great Movies" list.^[9]

The film has a rating of 80 out of 100 on film-review collating website Metacritic,^[10] and an approval rating of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes by film critics.^[11]

Music

The score was composed by Thomas Newman, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1994, which was his first Oscar nomination. The majority of the score consists of dark piano music, which plays along the main character's role at Shawshank. The main theme ("End Titles" on the soundtrack album) is perhaps best known to modern audiences as the inspirational sounding music from many movie trailers dealing with inspirational, dramatic, or romantic films in much the same way that James Horner's driving music from the end of Aliens is used in many movie trailers for action films. A central scene in the film features the "Letter Duet" ("Canzonetta sull'aria") from Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro.

References

Further reading

• Mark Kermode (2003). The Shawshank Redemption. London: British Film Institute. ISBN 978-0851709680. http://books.google.com/?id=hYBZAAAAMAAJ. 

External links

• The Shawshank Redemption at the Internet Movie Database
• The Shawshank Redemption at Allmovie
• The Shawshank Redemption at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Shawshank Redemption at Box Office Mojo