The Shawshank Redemption (1994) A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1997 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: A rare one. A grand and wise movie about cosmic patience, hope found, and hope kept.
The beauty of THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION is in the slow and careful way it works towards its conclusion. Which is, I have to say, a deceptive one: the movie starts by making you believe it's going to find its subject in one man, but in reality is about another.
The two men in question are Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) and Red (Morgan Freeman), inmates in Shawshank Prison. Dufresne, as we learn in the opening credits, has been sentenced to two life sentences for murdering his wife and her lover. We are shown quite plainly that he didn't do it, but in prison everyon's innocent: his factual innocence means nothing there.
Dufresne is assaulted brutally over a period of years. The way the movie deploys this is heartbreaking: this is not one of those cheapjack movies where the hero sits up all night working to conceal a rock in his fist and then creams his tormentors with one blow each. He will only be able to survive by outlasting others, by outthinking them, and by putting himself out of their reach.
Red is a procurer: for the right price, he can get you anything short of escape. But in Shawshank, any escape is worth it -- even a poster of Rita Hayworth -- and so Red is constantly in business. Dufresne and Red slowly grow to like each other, Red warming to Dufresne's quiet, persistent manner.
Slowly, over the course of time, Dufresne begins to make changes in the way the prison operates. He has all the time in the world; why not make the most of it? And while this is happening, another, more subtle series of changes is taking place inside Red -- one which we see dramatized in each of his consecutive parole board meetings, ten years or so apart.
The movie is patient. There is no hurried scurrying from one forced plot point to another, but instead the wonderful feeling of a story developing on its own, flowing naturally from its material and its characters. And what characters: as Dufresne, Tim Robbins is almost invisible, but all the better for it. When he finally smiles and raises his face to the rain near the end of the movie (in a shot which was better off being kept out of the trailers), he's earned it. Freeman, as Red, does gradual things with his role that are worth watching the movie a second time for. Maybe a third, since he's a lot more important to the significance of the title than we think at first.
There are some deviations from the original Stephen King novella, and some people will no doubt find this irksome, although it's probably inevitable. But they don't damage the movie as a whole -- in fact, it would probably take nothing short of a missing reel of film to do that.
Four out of four rock hammers.
syegul@ix.netcom.com EFNet IRC: GinRei http://www.io.com/~syegul another worldly device... you can crush me as I speak/write on rocks what you feel/now feel this truth =smilin' in your face, all the time wanna take your place, the BACKSTABBERS=
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