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  Matt
  
Willis
The Shawshank Redemption
USA, 1994
[Frank Darabont]
Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, Clancy Brown, William Sadler
Drama
  
The Shawshank Redemption falls into one of the two categories I hate to review. There are some films which attack you on an emotional level (think Rushmore or Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai) and are brilliant, and then there are some films which are so brilliant on every level that to even attempt to write about them in less than a thousand words becomes a painstaking task in itself. Shawshank features some of the former but for the latter is one of the most complete I can imagine. It's an astonishing film, truly breathtaking in its scripting, direction, casting, acting... everything in fact. It quite rightly occupies the no.2 spot on the IMDb's Top 250 movies of all time (as of writing), and if it wasn't for The Godfather, would be no.1.

Shawshank is about so many things, the most clear-cut is redemption itself. Tim Robbins character of Andy Dufresne is a man convicted of the brutal double murder of his wife and her lover, and sentenced to spend his entire life behind bars. The audience is deliberately kept in the dark about whether or not he is innocent till two thirds of the way through the film. In there he meets Ellis Redding (Freeman), Red to his friends, and the two of them slowly become the best of friends. The sole most important strand of the entire movie is their redemption, and Dufresne's striving to improve both his own lot and that of his fellow inmates, something no one had thought of doing before. Red had already been in prison a good 20 years before Andy was sentenced, and his love for his friend is also tempered by the cold realities he has already faced from so many years of incarceration.

This leads us to the second most important strand of the film: hope. As the tagline itself says, "Fear can hold you prisoner... ...hope can set you free". It is Andy's hope for eventual freedom and justice which worries Red the most, and their philosophical debating over the merits of that hoping forms the backbone of the films character development, and the central set of conflicts between Andy and Red, and Andy and the system itself, personified by the God-fearing Warden (Gunton) and his violent henchman, prison guard Hadley (Brown). The mental battles those two wage, with Andy always at such a disadvantage, lead eventually to the magnificent climax which, though not strictly the end of the film, leaves you breathless and shaken with wonder.

Alongside those four central characters are a whole host of men who impact on Andy and Red's life in some way. Most are friendly and benign, such as Heywood (Sadler), or the elderly librarian Brooks (James Whitmore), whose release after 50 years in jail sets the final nervy third of the film in motion. Others, such as Bogs, impact negatively on Andy and cause the viewer to seriously ponder the limits of a mans nerve and composure. All of these characters though, and some are in the film a lot without saying much, are beautifully realised simply by the camerawork and the facial expressions of the actors involved. Other than Andy and Red though, we never get to know what any of these men are in jail for such a long time for. All are in before Andy arrives, and all are still there 19 years after he leaves, so they must hve committed some awful crimes between them.

The script deliberately stays away from this fact though and focuses solely on the men as men, rather than as their crimes. In some ways, though it is never made overt, it is a film which rails against the imprisonment of a person, or more accurately their spirit, and gives a voice and encouragement to anyone whose spirit is broken and whose hope has deserted them. This is a film which suggests that anything is possible, and that no matter how bad things get, there is always a chink of light in the darkness to cling on to. It is a film which encompasses feelings and thoughts not easy to quantify or detail, but which somehow succeeds in this beyond everyone's wildest dreams.

Robbins and Freeman are magnificent, Darabont brilliant in what was his first real stab at a feature movie, and the location of
Shawshank prison itself, a massive gothic building symbolising hopelessness, a testament to the level of detail achieved throughout the film. I cannot recommend this film enough, but I would be very surprised if anyone reading this has not seen it yet. The Shawshank Redemption is a truly glorious film, and sure to be included in just about everyone who has seen its' top ten.
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