The Shawshank Redemption

1994

Director: Frank Darabont

Distributor: Columbia Pictures / Warner Brothers

Key Elements: Story – Lines – Characters – Message

My Review:

This is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Great writing. Moving acting. And an important message.

Andy’s world has fallen apart. His wife cheated on him. Then she was murdered. And, framed for the killing, he has been sent to Shawshank prison where he suffers terrible abuse.

Amazingly, though he is knocked down, he is not destroyed. Andy holds onto hope even when everyone thinks he’s crazy. In the end, he shows them all.

As in all great stories, the gospel can be found in this one. As Red puts it, Andy “crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.” It parallels the way Jesus went through death – both physical and spiritual – and yet came out alive and victorious on the other side. Andy not only frees himself, he takes down the corrupt prison staff and inspires Red to hope for his own freedom. In the same way, Jesus work conquers sin and death and gives us the hope of new, eternal life.

Beautiful movie.

Trailer:



Quotes:

• It's my life. Don't you understand? IT'S MY LIFE!
• I must admit I didn't think much of Andy first time I laid eyes on him; looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over. That was my first impression of the man.
• The first night's the toughest, no doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born, skin burning and half blind from that delousing shit they throw on you, and when they put you in that cell... and those bars slam home... that's when you know it's for real. A whole life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it.
• What was his name?
  - What did you say?
  I was just wondering if anybody knew his name.
• Same old shit, different day
• I could see why some of the boys took him for snobby. He had a quiet way about him, a walk and a talk that just wasn't normal around here. He strolled, like a man in a park without a care or a worry in the world, like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place. Yeah, I think it would be fair to say... I liked Andy from the start.
  This is the part I really like, when she does that shit with her hair.
• We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the lords of all creation. As for Andy - he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his face, watching us drink his beer. … You could argue he'd done it to curry favor with the guards. Or, maybe make a few friends among us cons. Me, I think he did it just to feel normal again, if only for a short while.
• I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.
• That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you... Haven't you ever felt that way about music?
  - I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it though. Didn't make much sense in here.
  Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget.
  - Forget?
  Forget that... there are places in this world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside... that they can't get to, that they can't touch. That's yours.
  - What're you talking about?
  Hope.
• These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized.
• You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?
  - No.
  They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.
• Get busy living, or get busy dying.
• Andy crawled to freedom through five-hundred yards of shit smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want too. Five-Hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.
• Andy Dufresne - who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.
  I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend.
• Ellis Boyd Redding, your files say you've served 40 years of a life sentence. Do you feel you've been rehabilitated?
  - Rehabilitated? …Well now, let's see. You know, I don't have any idea what that word means.
  Well, it means you are ready to rejoin society...
  - I know what you think it means sonny. To me it's just a made-up word. A politician's word; so, young fellows like yourself wear a suit and a tie... and have a job. What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?
  Well, are you?
  - There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here and because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then... a stupid, young kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him. Tell him the way things are, but I can't. That kid's long gone, and this old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that. 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.
• Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
• I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

Stills: