My Life at the Movies 2.17.09: 1994 - The Shawshank Redemption

Posted by DC Perry on 02.17.2009

Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best thing. And nothing good ever dies.

In my last three columns, my choice has matched the winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture of that year. While I am aware which movie wins the award each year, I don't factor that into my choice. I consider the fact that the Academy and I agreed on the best movie three years in a row to be proof that a blind squirrel will indeed find a nut every once in a while. I leave determining the identity of the squirrel as an exercise for the reader. I offer 1998 and 2005 as evidence in my defense.

1994 is the Murderer's Row of movie years. Any of the top five, and maybe even down to the top ten, movies of that year could make a case to be the best movie of any other year on this list. Forrest Gump, Quiz Show, Natural Born Killers, The Lion King, Clerks, Reality Bites, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Ed Wood, Killing Zoe – hell, even Speed is impossible to turn off if I stumble on it in the middle of the night. But if 1994 is Murderer's Row, then Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption are Ruth and Gehrig.

Pulp Fiction changed everything about the way we interpret movies. The blink-and-you'll-miss-it dialogue, the pop culture references, the non-linear story structure. Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece is self referential and self conscious without once winking at the audience, and its style inspired countless film makers who came after.

Also, people say fuck a lot.



On the other hand, The Shawshank Redemption tells a powerful story of freedom, safety, bravery, fear, and hope, in a style that is decidedly not self conscious. The camera is unobtrusive; the editing is practically unnoticeable. The power here is in the story, not in the technique.

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. – Ursula K. LeGuin



1994 at a Glance

US President: Bill Clinton
Median annual salary: $32,264
Gallon of gas: $1.11
Dozen eggs: $0.87
New house: $154,500
New car: $18,657
Movie ticket: $4.18
Boston Red Sox: Damn it all.
Me: Graduating high school. Moving to Ohio. Starting college. The days are just packed.


Banker Andy Dufresne's (Tim Robbins) wife cheated on him, and when she and her lover are murdered, he is convicted and sentenced to two life sentences. He maintains his innocence, but so does every inmate in Shawshank State Penitentiary. Andy keeps to himself for a long time at the beginning of his sentence, but eventually reaches out to Ellis "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman), an inmate 20 years into his life sentence who has a reputation for getting items from the outside. Andy wants a rock hammer so he can collect rocks, and after he convinces Red he won't use it to murder anyone, Red obliges. Later, while the prisoners watch Gilda, Andy asks Red to smuggle in a poster of Rita Hayworth to hang on his wall.

Andy is a small, quiet man, and he attracts the unwanted attention of The Sisters, a gang of rapists who torment and assault Andy repeatedly. While resurfacing the roof of the license plate factory, a plum outdoor assignment Red used his influence to get for him and his friends, Andy overhears Captain Hadley (Clancy Brown) complaining about the taxes he'll have to pay on money his dead brother left him. Andy offers to help Hadley keep all the money, and despite nearly dropping him off the roof, Hadley finally believes him. Andy begins doing taxes for the guards and the warden, and the next time The Sisters assault Andy, the guards take matters into their own hands.


Two things never happened again after that. The Sisters never laid a finger on Andy again... and Bogs never walked again.

Andy's special privileges don't end there. He is reassigned from the laundry room to the library so he can concentrate on his booming tax business. Warden Norton (Bob Gunton) begins to take advantage of Andy's financial skills, laundering money from bribes he receives from local businessmen as a result of his inmate work release program. Andy helps Norton in exchange for access to the prison's ever-expanding library, bought with funds allocated by the government to stop Andy's constant requests. Andy also begins helping his fellow inmates earn their GEDs, including Tommy Williams (Gil Bellows, who was grown for this role in a vat of R.P. McMurphy goo), a petty thief who tells Andy about his last cellmate, Elmo Blatch (Bill Bolender), who murdered a man and his girlfriend, and about the girlfriend's husband who went to prison for it. When Andy approaches Norton about a new trial based on Tommy's testimony, Norton dismisses the idea. He later meets with Tommy out in the yard to confirm his story. When Norton is convinced Andy would be freed on Tommy's testimony, he nods to Hadley, who guns Tommy down.


His Judgment Cometh and That Right Soon.

Norton's attempts to maintain control backfire as badly as possible. Andy was content to do Norton's dirty work as long as he was free to improve life inside the prison. Now, the deal is clearly off. That night, after giving Norton a Bible to put in his safe and keeping the ledger book for himself, Andy returns to his cell and escapes through the hole he's been digging with his rock hammer, concealed behind a series of pin up posters, for the past eighteen years. He crawls through the sewer, changes into the suit he stole from Norton, and withdraws over $300,000 from the various accounts he set up to launder Norton's money. Andy takes off for Mexico, leaving enough money for Red to follow him once he's paroled.


Andy Dufresne - who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.

The Shawshank Redemption is about freedom. Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore), the prison librarian who is finally paroled after fifty years on the inside, cannot cope with life on the outside. He gets a suit, a room in boarding house, and a job bagging groceries, but his life doesn't make sense to him anymore. Things move too fast. In Shawshank, he had respect and an important job; outside, he's just an old arthritic bagger. Freedom kills him.



When he is finally paroled himself after forty years, Red nearly suffers Brooks' fate. He ends up in the same halfway house with the same job. But Red has something Brooks didn't. Something Andy gave him. Something that kept Andy free for eighteen years in prison, including months in solitary and repeated rapes.

Hope.


Get busy living, or get busy dying. That's God damn right.