Shawshank Redemption

Shawshank Redemption

1994

Director: Frank Darabont

Writer Frank Darabont and Stephen King (Short Story)

142 Minutes

What a terrific movie. Perfect and brilliant. There is not enough you can say about Shawshank Redemption, though I can tell you this.: it did not reach number one in the box office. There was a buddy-road trip-comedy that out-grossed Shawshank Redemption. Something we all saw. Something called Dumb and Dumber, which opened the same weekend.

Who says box office scores determine greatness?

For those of you who haven’t seen this film, stop reading. Actually, stop reading all together and turn on TNT. I’m sure it’s on. But for those of us who have seen it, you realize what an impact this film had that year. It changed how we saw film, perhaps made us a lover of the art. It did for me.

And with many scenes to choose from – like when Warden Nortan (Bob Gunton) takes Andy’s (Tim Robbins) bible and references phrases back and forth, or Andy’s final escape, crawling through 500 yards of shit, or two friends meeting on the beach – though this movie comes down to Red (Morgan Freeman) and his harmonica.

Sure, Andy is the main character. We empathize with him, see his journey, and cheer for his escape, but Red is the protagonist. Red has the character arch. In short, Red changes. Andy doesn’t.

Andy never loses hope. Red has lost it.

Hope is the theme and Andy the messenger. Throughout the movie, that’s what he brings. He got beers for his fellow “co-workers” when they were tarring the roof, even Red’s voice-over explaining, ‘we felt like free men.” He got a dozen inmates a high school education, including Tommy (Gil Bellow), who had a wife, kid, and no future. And he built a library full of used books and Hank Williams records.

Everything Andy does in this film is about hope. And he creates the idea that hope lives outside the walls of the dark, grayish-toned Shawshank Prison. Hope that there is was music – even Opera music – and books and a future and a beach in Mexico. Hope is what you can’t take away from someone, which he explains to his friends after a week in the hole.

The scene above is about Red and the crossroads between hope and despair. He used to play a mean harmonica, but he doesn’t make much sense to him now. Nevertheless, Andy gives him a harmonica as a parole rejection present, but Red can’t play it.

“Not right now,” he replies to the gift and puts it away.

Later, in his cell, Red stares down at the harmonica. He looks back on a life that was taken away from him - a life once hopeful. He slowly brings the harmonica to his lips and plays one note. He stops and grasps it with his hand.

That’s all the hope he can take.

Because like his friend and mentor Brooke Hatlen (James Whitmore), who ran the library, got paroled, and ended up hanging himself, Red has no hope. He needs Andy to bring it back for him.

“You come here for life and that’s exactly what you get,” says Red.

In the end, Red eventually gets paroled. And like Brooks, he gets a job at the grocery market. Yet, he is forever changed by Andy. He is no longer scared. He is no longer alone. He has something to look forward too. He has hope.

Andy explains in his letter, ‘Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and a good thing never dies,” while the last lines of the movie are, “I hope I can make it across the boarder, I hope to see my friend and shake his hand, I hope the Pacific is as blue as it is my dreams, I hope….”

Kinda jammed down your throat, isn’t it? Yet, it’s a word most never think of when watching Shawshank because the story is so great. It’s a word used at the end of most American films. Because us, as Americans, love hope. Like we love freedom, patriotism, and hot dogs. Hope is engrained in our society, so we can have something more. A lover. A dream. Or a new life with your best friend. That’s all Red needed. And hope is all we needed.