The Shawshank Redemption by Frank Darabont
Review by Anar M., Youth Reviewer
I recently watched Frank Darabont’s “The Shawshank Redemption” (1994), and it’s just climbed to the top of my “favourite movies” list.
It’s narrated by Ellis “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman), but the main character is Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins). When the movie begins, Andy is being tried for the murder of his wife and her lover, but claims innocence: he did drive to her lover’s house with a gun and wait for her to get back, but then drove away and threw the gun into the river. The two of them were murdered that night; Andy is convicted and goes to Shawshank prison, where he meets Red and where most of the movie takes place.
One of the best parts of the film is the way that it brings back ideas or motifs, again and again, until the last time, there’s a twist. Red, for example, is described several times as “the guy who can get things for you” in the prison — first when Andy approaches him about it, but the phrase is repeated later on until it becomes something of a motif. Later still, Red describes himself using the same words, and adds that that’s who he is in the prison: he doesn’t know who he is outside of it. The declaration is all the more disturbing because we, watching, have come to think of Red in those terms: we feel, viscerally, Red’s point, that his entire identity is tied to the prison in which he has spent most of his life. It’s not a unique technique for the director to use, but it is used to great effect.
The repetition-with-a-twist effect isn’t always negative, though. When we first see Red, his parole hearing is rejected, even though he says all the right things about being rehabilitated and regretting what he’s done. Halfway through the movie, he’s rejected again, the scene is repeated, and then again near the end: each time, a door opens from darkness into a lit room in which a board sits at a table. The last time, the board members are younger and one of them is a woman: this time, Red’s parole is approved.
The other thing that I particularly liked was Andy’s character. He doesn’t speak much, but is quietly knowledgeable about a variety of things including geology, music, and banking. Some of his more surprising actions are explained at the end of the movie — his uncharacteristic request for posters of famous actresses, for example — but others are simply taken because that’s the kind of person he is: prominently, sending a letter a week requesting funds for books in the prison, and upping it to two letters a week when he at last received a response. Or playing a duet from The Marriage of Figaro over the prison’s speaker system. He’s interesting, complex, and profoundly likeable.
All in all, “The Shawshank Redemption” is a fun, well-crafted film. It’s a classic for a reason.