The Shawshank Redemption

I spent a lot of time brainstorming about what the first film I watched for this project should be. I felt like it needed to be something epic, something monumental. I perused Top 50, 100, 500, etc. lists of movies to try to pick a really great one. One film that seemed to continuously come up on top was The Shawshank Redemption.

I started watching this at midnight; I was only intending to watch an hour of it and pick up the rest in the morning. Understandably, I was completely enthralled by the movie and ended up watching it straight through (which is unusual for me, as I usually lose focus/interest in a movie about halfway through). I found this to be a very compelling story and one that I’ve been mulling over since I finished the film.

Structure

One facet of the film that really stood out to me was its structure. I am generally strongly opposed to voiceover narration (although Morgan Freeman could narrate grass growing and I’d still find it interesting), but I am slightly more sympathetic to Shawshank’s use of voiceover after reading that Darabont was making homage to Goodfellas (which I haven’t seen yet… perhaps my next film?) with its VO narration.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what using Red as a narrator as opposed to Andy lends to the film. Obviously, it makes more sense to give Andy’s story through the lens of Red in order to keep us in the dark about Andy’s intentions so the moment of his escape carries more weight and surprise. More than that, I believe that we have to get Andy’s experience tempered through Red’s perspective because Red is so entrapped by the routinized, cyclical environment of the prison. By presenting Andy’s story through Red’s eyes, Andy’s break from traditional behavior and prison routine is all the more striking and it; it is ultimately instrumental in jarring Red out of his rut and forcing him to reassess his life and realize that hope is not always a bad thing. Andy’s story presented first person would not be able to capture the irregularity of his story and would undermine the incredible break of the cycle that his escape and freedom represents.

Red’s role as the narrator carries even more weight when you look at the physical structure of the film. Red’s parole meetings are shown three times; each meeting coincides with a new “act” in the film, so to speak. There is the opening sequence in the courtroom and then the first parole meeting is shown. Act I begins after that, as we see Andy’s early days in Shawshank and his process of acculturation to prison life. Then we see another parole meeting (and another rejection), followed by Act II. Act II shows the development of the Shawshank library, Tommy’s arrival and murder, Andy’s serious talk with Red about his future plans, and Andy’s escape. The warden then kills himself and the film cuts immediately to the third parole meeting. The third parole meeting is different; a change is noticeable in Red as he drops his usual prerehearsed speech. He tells the parole board scathingly:

“Rehabilitated? It’s just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit”.

Andy’s actions in Act II have broken the cycle and instituted an ideological shift within Shawshank; his escape signifies that hope is not just a fool’s haven and that freedom is possible, as evidenced by Red’s subsequent release. The last portion of the film is about freedom and learning how to cope with the fear of being free.

Repetition and Parallelism

            – The film features much repetition, as with Red’s parole meetings and other instances of situational dialogue, for example, when Andy tells Tommy upon his arrival:

“I got fucked by my lawyer. Don’t you know everyone here is innocent?”

Here Andy is simply repeating what he was told on his first day. There is also a good bit of parallelism, like in the scenes with Brooks and Red in the same room of the halfway house. These both contribute to an almost cyclical feel to the film which could be read as a critique of the justice system which routinizes you so completely that you can’t exist in the outside world, encouraging you to commit more crime so you can go back to prison where you feel safe. Andy is able to break the cycle and not get sucked back into the ‘Shawshank or die’ mindset exhibited by Brooks. However, this does not excuse the obvious shortcomings of a justice system that conditions you to be unfit for the real world, further accentuated by the corruption within the prison administration as seen in the Warden and other prison officials.

Other Comments

Laaaaaaaaaaame. (I ironically found this image from a blog post entitled “My Favorite MOVIE ENDINGS”)

–       I absolutely hated the ending. It was just too perfect, a storybook ending. All the loose ends were tied up, and it just didn’t fit with the rest of the film. I was somewhat validated to read that Darabont had strongly opposed the reunion of Red and Andy and wanted to end the film ambiguously, leaving us unsure as if Red ever finds Andy. Castle Rock, typically, forced the cheesy ending to please audiences with a sappy reunion.

–       I appreciate the Count of Monte Cristo bit of foreshadowing, I didn’t even realize it except in retrospect and felt a bit obtuse.

–       I found it interesting that basically the only time we saw women in the film was in the screened movie of Rita Hayworth and in the posters on Andy’s cell wall. The use of Raquel Welch’s poster to cover his escape hole probably could be read in a feminist critique with women functioning simply as objects and as a recipient of the male gaze. But I won’t get into that.

–       Lastly, I enjoyed the gradual moral shift of the film in which we slowly began to identify with the prisoners and their morality became elevated as the corruption within the prison administration become more blatantly obvious.