THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994)

Bad luck is said to float around. Occasionally, it lands on people, the incorporeal hand of fate arbitrarily selecting hapless souls to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Sometimes, the storm you find yourself in passes quickly. But there are those times when it seems as though you will spend the rest of your sorry days in ceaseless night, a pitch-black darkness, without even a glimmer of salvation. In such scenarios, how can we keep from despairing?

Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) knew how. Even though he’s expected to spend his whole life in the penitentiary, serving two consecutive life sentences for a crime he claims he didn’t commit, he walks around like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Red (Morgan Freeman) is bemused by his mentality: doesn’t the man know there’s no way out?

The Shawshank Redemption, based on Stephen King’s 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, is perhaps the greatest film about the power of hope and the danger of despair ever made. In a film that reigns supreme on IMDb’s list of Top 250 films of all time, we witness a striking parable on what it means to be human: beset with suffering, we strive to find purpose, strength, and happiness. As subhuman sadists desire to break a man’s spirit, to turn him into something less than himself, one prisoner reveals to a thousand others how we all possess a light inside of us—a fire that no one can ever truly quench.

But in prison, they’ll try. It’s a grey, lifeless place. Shawshank Prison is a dreary underworld, a soulless realm where the promise of rehabilitation is quickly shown to be a fool’s fantasy; for most, this is only a place of eternal torment, one that robs you of any dreams and aspirations you may have had in life. And just when new inmates cross the River Styx into that drab, dark netherworld, Lucifer stands out and offers an untrustworthy hand: “Put your trust in the Lord; your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank.”

There’s a stink of false piety at this institution. The warden Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton) oversees the perdition of a slew of convicts, not because he cares for their salvation, but because these indentured servants can make him a fortune. Slave labour is justified through an elaborate process of dehumanisation: these aren’t people, but convicts. Exploiting them isn’t only right, but is all a part of the rehabilitation process.

Of course, this is a convenient lie, one that services a system of elite and corrupt bureaucrats. Even the word itself has a hollow ring to it: “Rehabilitated? To me, it’s just a made-up word. A politician’s word, so young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie, and have a job.” The promise of freedom is a mirage, a delusive dream. It’s a perfunctory charade to justify a broken apparatus. The allure of institutionalised forgiveness slowly morphs into an embittered disillusionment: “Same old shit, different day.” After a time, even the thought of freedom is considered to be a dangerous illusion.   

On the first night, grown men weep in their beds: there’s always one. Realising that their reckless behaviour or ill fate has led them to utter ruin, despair sets in. In a world where even the simplest of pleasures are denied, convicts take bets to determine who will break soonest. Red believes that Andy Dufresne will be the first to lose heart under the hopelessness of his situation. Yet, on his first night in the slammer, Andy doesn’t make a sound.

While newbies break down on their first night, veterans wilt on their last: after spending over 50 years in prison, Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore) is threatened with emancipation. It is like being asked to serve another whole prison term, another life sentence in a new, alien system. Under such Draconian measures, men become used to a routine: asleep at lights out, awake for roll call. Even trips to the bathroom must be requested. If imprisoned long enough, men break under the weight of their liberty; as Brooks stares into his future, the dizzying effect of freedom causes him to topple.

Brooks is emblematic of the institutionalised man; robbed of his free will for so long, he becomes a frightened shell of himself when released into the real world. Realising that he’s nothing more than an old con with arthritic hands, he longs for a return to the place that stole his life: the oppressive, confining walls became his greatest source of comfort, their interminable promise of uninterrupted stasis serving as a warm, friendly assurance. This is the true danger of losing oneself to despair: torment not only seems permissible but the only thing you can ever remember knowing.

What is left of a person’s humanity when they acquiesce to their punishment, and when they finally cease fighting back? What becomes of a man’s soul when he begins to identify with his predicament, so that he soon can’t tell which is which? A person’s spirit leaks out of them when they decide they are no more than their environment, no better than their tormentors. The Sisters are symbolic of this demonic possession; the inhuman manifestations of depravity, they are the grotesque embodiment of prison’s dehumanising potential.

Andy understands that there’s something precious inside every man at Shawshank, something that must be dearly protected. “There are places in this world that aren’t made of stone. There’s something inside that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch—that’s yours.” If you are ever to emerge from your penitence with your humanity intact, you must remember who you are—in an abyss like Shawshank, it’s easy to forget.

Perhaps that’s why convicts inscribe their names on the wall. It’s as though it were a signed document, one that reads: “I was here. I have passed through this place—feel my ghost.” When hope is denied to a person, they can only remember what once was. Reminiscing about the days when you had a name and were not a mere number, a cog in the industrial prison complex, is the only way to stave off blind terror.

Fear plagues men at Shawshank. Each must find a way to bear the yoke of their sentence. For Andy, he finds that the only way he can make sense of his life is to bring salvation to his comrades; he becomes akin to a Christ-like figure. He inspires men to pursue their education, regardless of the outcome. And he gives them music, momentarily setting them free, allowing their souls to fly over the confining jail walls.

This is aberrant behaviour at Shawshank: kindness and compassion are not usually given—only reciprocated, for a service or a set price. For two years, Andy was raped in the dark corners of laundry rooms. No one helped him. Guards finally put a stop to the assaults not because it was the right thing to do, but because he had become a valuable commodity. After all, if The Sisters had continued to sodomise Andy, what would happen to tax season?

The Shawshank Redemption is a story about fortitude, about clinging to hope no matter how unlikely salvation may be. It is shown to be a powerful, transcendent force that exists deep inside of us. But we are also shown what life is like without it: “I’m tired of being afraid all the time… so, I’ve decided not to stay…”

Yet, despite the poor hand he was dealt, Dufresne is uncommonly optimistic. This trait is framed as being just as dangerous as it is empowering. Cynicism is the more amenable mentality given their circumstances; if hope is well and truly quashed, an optimist can turn suicidal when their understanding of the world is finally dashed.

“I didn’t expect the storm to last as long as it has…” Dufresne laments in disbelief, bewildered that his burden has endured despite his best efforts to shrug it off his shoulders. And Red looks at him with concern: there is an indescribable terror in watching the most resilient of men fall under the pressure of hardship, under the collar of persistent cruelty. If he can have his spirit swept into the dirt, what does that say about the rest of us?

But Andy Dufresne understands more about the human condition than any other person at Shawshank. He knows how much joy a bottle of beer on a sunny May afternoon can give to a man who has been denied the taste of freedom for so long. He has an innate understanding of how laughter can still be found in the most unlikely of scenarios, and that an individual can, should, and must strive for hope, always. We cannot abandon our resolve in the most desperate of circumstances; it’s precisely in such situations that we need it most.

To succumb to cynicism is a choice. It’s an ultimatum presented to every man at Shawshank: “Get busy living… or get busy dying.” Dufresne seems acutely aware of the fact that, no matter how much suffering he is forced to endure, the decision to give up hope remains his own. This is shown to contrast Red’s understanding of life in jail. While Dufresne believes in an ethereal, intangible essence inside every person, Red knows how the industrial prison complex can rob you of your soul—it doesn’t require consent. “They send you here for life—and that’s exactly what they take. The part that counts anyway.”

As Benjamin Franklin once said: “Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until they’re 75.” To resign oneself to a vacant existence is to seal your own coffin; if you’ve got a pulse, perhaps salvation is still possible. That is because it need not come in the form of a great escape; deliverance could be little more than meeting a new friend. And even then, friendships can take many forms: an old man and his rescued bird, a pedagogue and his temperamental student, or two old cons playing a game of draughts.

Part of being at Shawshank involves losing friends, whether through a premature demise or by freedom. Knowing a void could be filled by another precious person, only to lose them again, is a pain unlike many others in life. As we watch Brooks release his pet crow into the world, it does not possess a cathartic atmosphere—it’s sad. “I can’t take care of you anymore, Jake… you’re free…”

This is because to live in Shawshank, or anywhere in the world, is to watch your friends disappear like phantoms. As a bird is uncaged, the happiness we would associate with freedom is stained with melancholy. The joy of knowing your friend is living better now than he was with you is hollowed out by the ache of solitude. Red soliloquises on Andy’s absence, thinking of how wonderful his daring endeavour was, but selfishly muses on how a light has been extinguished, with his life returning to a colourless, empty darkness. Simply put: “I guess I just miss my friend.”

The ephemeral, ineffable nature of human experience is a central theme in The Shawshank Redemption. The most fundamental of pleasures provide the greatest joys. Listening to a piece of classical music is tantamount to liberation: “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.” Why is it that, amidst all the heartache and suffering that occurs in Shawshank, five minutes of opera could evoke such intense emotions? Much like Andy says after his stint in solitary, there is something that exists in all of us, something no one can touch.   

Among all the men at Shawshank, there is a fantasy of escaping to a faraway paradise, one where a man could have his sins washed clean. It’s a place without memory. The ending takes on an air of reverie—is Red really on a beach of golden sand, in a distant, dreamlike location? Or is he only living out his wildest aspirations, finding solace in the depths of his hopeful imagination: “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…” We may never truly know the answer to this—we can only hope the ending is a happy one.   

And that, ultimately, is what makes The Shawshank Redemption an uncommonly stirring film. Our protagonist has an ecclesiastical presence without becoming pious. The message has a celestial power, though it never devolves into simplistic aphorisms about overcoming hardship. Instead, the film sublimely conveys the transcendental nature of being alive, and the unpredictable vicissitudes of life.

As a man marches through a field, boldly striding forward at the start of a long journey, we wish every step he takes meets solid ground. We pray that this person can find their happiness and that they make it to their haven. That’s because, when a man dies, you ask for his name. And when he’s walking along a road, you ask him where he’s heading. In doing so, part of someone else becomes part of you, and salvation can be achieved together. Or, at least, we can hope so. There are a lot of bad things in the world, but hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things—and no good thing ever dies.

USA | 1994 | 142 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Frank Darabont.
writer: Frank Darabont (based on the novella ‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’ by Stephen King).
starring: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, William Sadler, Clancy Brown, Gil Bellows & James Whitmore.