Shawshank

Shawshank Redemption
Two Life Sentences

The movie that won the best picture nominations is a movie that involves many different personalities and underlying themes. The personalities of the inmates are very interesting and when they are combined they create a very fascinating plot which looks at life in prison in a different perspective. “Shawshank Redemption” is a film which you wouldn’t expect to find hope, but it showed that a prison as a place where murderers and thieves lived, but also as a community of people who have had some problems and may or may not be rehabilitating. Tim Robbins starring as “Andy Dufresne”, and Morgan Freeman starring as “Red”, build their friendship over the 20 years. Their imprisonment makes up this brilliant film. Wrongly accused of a double homicide he didn’t commit, a banker named Andy Dufrense is sent to “Shawshank Prison” for two life sentences. In the prisons walls he befriends Red who is able to smuggle things from the outside, he is confused when Andy first requests for a rock hammer. It turns out that Andy has many interests such as rock carving, and his financial expertise helps the warden and some of the guards accumulate personal fortunes. But Andy’s life in prison is full of danger as he tried to save himself from a group of prisoner thugs “The Sisters “and the warden does not hesitate to put him in solitary confinement every once in a while, just to remind him who is really in charge. There are many themes represented in each form of the “Shawshank Redemption”. The one major theme that interests me in the film is freedom. Freedom serves a large purpose for the filmmaker. It use’s examples to signify freedom, not only in the jail, but also in a larger context about life. The one main difference is when the film uses the director’s technique to portray a feel of freedom for the inmates. The overall three issues used, are all linked to the feelings of the inmates and the sense of freedom within the prison walls. In the flashback the composer has used a low angle camera shot of Andy when he realized the walls of his cell are porous and the idea of making his escape is born. This retrospectively positions the responder to recognize Andy’s power of captors in captors instance. Frank Darabnt used the film’s soundtrack to explore the value of freedom, sombre, dissonant background music accompanies Andy’s attempts to escape institutional life using the background of storm to mask the noise he needs to make. This is deliberately unsettling for the responder as we do not want Andy’s escape plan to be discovered. Hope and redemption are a major part of the story, and something shown in many of the characters. Hope is the major force behind the lead character Andy. He restores the hope in Red. Brooks, a long time inmate of Shawshank had lost his hope. He had become institutionalized. “These prison walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them. That's institutionalized. They send you here for life, that's exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyway." Red is heading for the same fate as Brooks, but Andy changes his way of thinking and brings him hope. The weakness in the film that I noticed was that the prisoners are too intellectual and not nearly nasty or brutish enough, while the guards are too stereotyped. In addition there is a bundle of minor loose ends, a result of trying to cover so much expository ground; the most obvious of these is how the cast hardly appear to age. “Shawshank Redemption” is mercifully free of cheap horror and overwrought dialogue, this tale celebrates the resilience of the human spirit. This single fiber concerns the seemingly naive figure of Andy, trapped within a world of pain and danger. Where lesser men might have crumbled in time, Andy is a man with hidden reserves. Tim Robbins plays the role of “Andy Dufrense” with such confidence and excellence that would make you think that no one could have played Andy as good as Tim did. He also shows hope, fear, pain, suffering superbly. In the scene where he learns of his conviction, you can see an ordinary person, totally helpless finding his world collapsing around him. But the performance of the movie is given by Morgan Freeman as “Red”, he delivers an excellent performance that will make you stand up and applaud, he was the perfect actor for this movie. “Red”, he is simply brilliant, whether it’s befriending Red or his confusion of the escape, his scene when he is refused parole. The other characters such as the Warden, Brooks and Hadley all play a very important part in setting the mood and moving the story forward.