A grand yarn solidly told, The Shawshank Redemption takes place in 1947 Maine and centers on Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), a banker sentenced to two consecutive life terms at the fortress-like Shawshank State Prison for the murder of his wife and her lover. Suffering much while maintaining his innocence, he also exhibits an aloof resilience—one that puzzles his fellow prisoner, Red (Morgan Freeman), who serves as the story’s narrator.
That narration is leaned on a bit too heavily by director Frank Darabont, who would go on to make two more Stephen King movie adaptations (The Green Mile and The Mist). Yet with that melodious twinkle in Freeman’s voice, who am I to complain? Freeman gives by far the film’s best performance; Red barely talks about himself, but Freeman lives this man out so fully that we come to know him better than anyone else (the nonverbal moments, such as his tentative blow on a precious harmonica, are exquisite). Andy, on the other hand, is something of a cipher, partly due to Robbins’ remote presence, but also due to the fact that he’s written as a vague stand-in for broadly inspirational notions of hope and, yes, redemption.
Is Andy also a Christ figure? Not quite—and anyway, The Shawshank Redemption is essentially a faith-based movie without any faith. Restricting its explicit religious representation to the prison’s hypocritical, abusive warden (Bob Gunton)—who tells new inmates, “Put your trust in the Lord. Your ass belongs to me.”—the movie’s secular humanist spin on Christian ideas is likely one reason it became so widely beloved (routinely holding the number-one spot on IMDB.com’s publicly voted Top 250 list) just as the United States was cementing its post-Christian identity. The redemption here speaks to audiences of all—or no—religious persuasions.
Which is not to denigrate its power, or filmmaking prowess. Working with cinematographer Roger Deakins, Darabont manages a series of soul-stirring images: the men in the prison yard frozen still, staring at a speaker as it bathes them in Mozart, which Andy has snuck onto the public-address system; the escaping Andy emerging from the prison’s sewers to be baptized by cleansing rain; Red, after parole, resting against a long rock wall after finding the tin box that Andy has left for him. It’s no small thing to move millions of hearts, over many years, with the story of a possible murderer (and, in Red’s case, a real one) who gets a second chance. The Shawshank Redemption managed a small miracle in doing just that.
(9/15/2024)
