I Understand You're A Man Who Knows How To Get Things.
- Alex Clark
- Jun 20, 2017
- 2 min read
The Shawshank Redemption
September 23rd, 1994
Dir. Frank Darabont
I was flicking through the TV channels over here in the UK a few nights ago and came across a film I haven’t watched in a fair few years, that film was The Shawshank Redemption. I quickly remembered how brilliant this film is.
A brilliant piece aimed at showing you the harsh realities of living in a prison environment, and on the other hand letting audiences feel the importance in friendship and perseverance in those bad situations. Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is a banker wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and her lover and gets given a life sentence at Shawshank State Penitentiary where he befriends Red, Morgan Freeman’s narrating supporting character. And what follows is a long unwinding story, which covers 40 years of life in Shawshank.
What I really like about this movie is that it doesn’t shy away from the gritty bits of prison life in that era in America. Within 15 minutes of the opening credits, the captain of the prison guards beats a man to death for making too much noise at night. Within 15 minutes of that you see a gang called ‘The Sisters’ corner our lead character and insinuating they do what they feel they need to do. And as Morgan Freeman narrates, brilliantly from start to finish, this happens for the next few years without Andy saying one word.
You get a real sense of empathy for Andy Dufresne, because you know watching it he is innocent, and that he is being put through this when he shouldn’t be. So from the off, you are rooting for Andy, you want him to win this war of attrition that is prison life. A war he is fighting on more than one front, against a corrupt warden, a captain who wont think twice at beating someone to death, to the sisters who in the words of Red, don’t have a drop of human left in them.
When you get to the final act of the film, you get a real sense that for a long time everything that Andy has done in prison life, over 40 long painful years was all for one purpose. To really be free, free of prison life and free of being the murderer he never was. The Shawshank Redemption is gritty, it’s heartbreaking, and it’s uplifting. It is perfection.
10/10 – There aren’t many films that have been made that you can call almost flawless. It’s very difficult to get that out of something where so many things can be considered ‘wrong’. The Shawshank Redemption is flawless, and it’s not something that can be thrown around lightly. But it deserves that title.
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