Reviewing my top 5 Movies of all Time
Day 1 – The Shawshank Redemption –
It’s hard to look back on this film and not have it have so
many different associations with different times in my life. I remember the first time watching it when I
was 22 years old and a projectionist at a movie theater at the time. It had come out and gotten good reviews and a
bunch of academy award nominations. I
was excited to go see it with my friends as it had one of my favorite actors in
it: Morgan Freeman. I really could have
cared less about Tim Robbins at the time although he had come out with The
Hudsucker Proxy, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, earlier that year. So while he wasn’t necessarily a must watch I
did want to see what his follow up film to that would be. And of course the source material was written
by Stephen King. I knew this was a hit
or miss proposition when it came to books converted into movies, especially
King’s books; but as this was one of his short stories I had more hopes for it.
There were me and a couple other friends watching the movie,
and as I worked for the movie theater, we did not pay for it. I think there might have been two or three
other people in the entire movie theater when the opening sequence of the court
trial of Andy Dufresne began. Movies
back then still held their allure of magic to me. I remember the time I was hired in the movie
theater and going up in to the projection booth to see all of the projectors
clicking through their rolls of film, and the lights flickering across every
movie theater. So when the theater
darkened and here was a story of a man going through hell and being redeemed at
the other end, I was transfixed. And by
the last lines of the movie, “I find I'm so excited that I can barely sit still
or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can
feel. A free man at a start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. 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.”
Goosebumps. Every. Single.
Time.
It was the epitome of movie magic. One of my best friends sitting next to me
looked at me and said, “I wanna make movies.
I wanna make movies like that.” I
couldn’t even argue with him. It was a
perfect example of why movies are magic.
It shows why movies transform our thinking about the world we live in
and our role within it. It displayed
both the danger and the promise of movie making in its two hours and 22 minute
length. Movies can move us in ways few
things can. And right there and then I
wanted to make movies. Sure, I had always
wanted to be a part of the film making process before. But in that moment I saw film as transformative. Pulling at the basest of emotions, working on
our capacity to hope and how it moves things, I cannot express in words what it
did to me at that moment. I just wanted
to sit there and stare at the screen long after the movie was over and take it
all in.
Now few of you remember, but I can attest, especially as it
is in Roger Ebert’s 100 greatest movies of all time, that Forest Gump was the
Academy Award winning picture that year.
This is not to be critical of Forest Gump mind you. But it was the perfectly commercialized piece
with the oddball character and the over the top acting that so frequents the
Academy Awards. And it was marketed well
to the general public. No one had even
heard of Shawshank Redemption, or very few people had. So in the next 10 years after its release people
slowly were exposed to the brilliance of the film on TNT and other such cable
TV stations, in somewhat edited fashion. So when I was to look at it again 10
years later, while still emotionally pulling on my heart strings, it was
gratifying that the rest of the world had been let in on the secret that I had
known years before. That a prison movie
with two hardened criminals, speaking of hope in the bleakest of human
circumstances, exhibited movie brilliance.
It was the reason people keep going back to the movie theater, year
after year.
And then came the third major period of experience. This one occurred almost 9 years later, 19
years after the original movie had been released. I was sitting on a couch in an emotional
state, going through a divorce, and sitting there feeling completely hopeless. I felt like the weight of the world was
pressing down on me and I didn’t know what direction to turn. And then I sit down watching that movie and
get to the note that Andy Dufresne writes to his friend Red. “Dear Red, If
you're reading this, you've gotten out. And if you've come this far, maybe
you're willing to come a little further. You remember the name of the town,
don't you? I could use a good man to help me get my project on wheels. I'll
keep an eye out for you and the chessboard ready. Remember, Red. Hope is a good
thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping
that this letter finds you, and finds you well. Your friend, Andy.”
It was like a release of an avalanche of tears coming
streaming down my face as the words were read as voice over narration. Even at the moment when Red says “Zihuatanejo,”
I am speaking it along with him. I am
thinking of that promised land of better tomorrows. I am hoping that each day is going to be
better than the day before. I am hoping
for the relationship with my daughter to get better, and for the life that
seemed in shambles at that moment to have a turn around. I am being carried away by the hopeful
musical score and the blue in the Pacific Ocean. I am hoping that the future I see before me
is the future of my dreams. I hope.
So why is the film itself so amazing? Why do I love Shawshank Redemption? Let’s first examine the message. First it taps into one of the three primary
human emotive forces that exist: faith, hope and love. This is not to say that there aren’t other
emotive forces in the world; but I would say they are either lesser secondary
forces, or they are various perversions of one of those three. We believe in
things; we love things; we hope for things.
Hope is a future looking force, thinking about what could be, and not
merely fixated on what is. Hope is
always brighter and not dimmer than what we are experiencing. We never hope for less. We always hope for more.
Shawshank Redemption shows hope in what would have been the
world’s worst possible situation. First,
you are person whose spouse ran out on you for another man. And she didn’t run out for just any other
man. She ran out for a golf pro, which
attacks the very nature of your manhood.
Then not only are you ceremoniously dumped, but then the wife tragically
dies in a double homicide. This means
that not only are you broken, but you can’t possibly get any closure from this
person. And to add insult to injury, you
are now charged and convicted of the crime that you didn’t even commit. This is bad enough but then Andy Dufresne
ends up having the “sisters” in the prison take a liking to him, meaning that
he is suffering through rape and abuse in the prison for the first two full
years of his stay there. One would think
that this is the perfect time to give up hope.
Many of us would definitely want to chuck in and call it a day. But there is something so strong about the
pull of hope that we still sit transfixed.
And then in the darkest of places Andy begins to reclaim his
humanity and his dignity. Why? Because he should expect that something
different should happen to him than it did before? Because somehow the people he was around now
he should expect to behave differently?
Because society was going to consider him to be different now? Of course
not. He was hoping for something better. Even in the hole, in a prison, where no light
would get in and he was subjected to slop for food, Andy could hope for a
beautiful place, on the ocean, with a boat to sail on and wind-blown hair. Should he expect that? No.
But the human capacity to hope, even in the darkest of situations, is
burrowed into our DNA.
The photography for the film was simple but elegant. A lot of quick opening shots as if Andy
Dufresne is descending into a nightmare, which he truly is. And then a long extensive shot of the whole
prison, and we now know the confines of the new hell that Andy is entering
into. He goes into a place that tries to
dehumanize everyone; and he shows what it means truly to be human. He may have been in that world, but he
certainly was not of that world. The
beautiful mixture of dark and light used in the film at different places adds
to the ambiance of the world Frank Darabont, in his first feature film
debut. He weaves a tale of light and
darkness where even in the direst of circumstances, the capacity to believe in
and hope for something allows humans to transcend their existence.
As for the acting, what more can be said? Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman shine as Andy
and Red. The two of them have some
amazing on screen chemistry, Morgan Freeman’s Red (Ellis Redding) being the
pivotal role. While Tim Robbins characterization of Andy Dufresne does
display the hope that one can have, it is in Morgan Freeman’s character of Red
that we can see man’s capacity to transform, which is the truly beautiful
part. At the beginning of the movie the
character of Red has served the first 20 years of a life sentence for murder. He had been “institutionalized” as he put it. Society had taken the life from him, and we
was going to fade out of existence. But
through his friendship with Andy, he saw a capacity to home for something more. And we don’t know what all of that is going
to mean for him until the end. “Get busy living, or get busy dying,” Red
summarizes his situation even after being let out of prison. But he summarizes his conclusion in one perfect exclamation point. “That’s God Damn right!” So when we seem him next, he is off on a bus,
a transformed character. And the
voice-over that had been used extensively throughout the film begins again. Morgan Freeman is getting ready to get on a
bus. He is full of wonder about what’s
before him. He is full of amazement
about every little thing. And ultimately
he is full of hope, for his friend and ultimately for himself.
Along with our main stars there are some great individual
performances in some smaller roles. From
James Whitmore, as the likeable but ultimately doomed character of Brooks
Hatlen, the former prison librarian before Andy takes over, to Mark Rolston as
Boggs Diamond the man responsible for Andy’s initial hell within the prison, to
Gil Bellows as an affable Tommy, whose life is coming off the rails and Andy
takes a personal interest in, the characters are fun and add to the prison comradery
that is developed throughout the picture.
There are so many other roles that I could get into and say what they
meant, but this is a blog and not a treatise on Shawshank.
Why do I love Shawshank? No matter how much I can get into
the intricacies of a particular film, sometimes the description only pales to
the actual work of art. You can look at
Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and try to describe the brush strokes, and the
brilliance of his work. You can get into
the picture as something that is living and breathing and how his work displays
that. But no matter how much you sit and
talk about it, until you are staring at the painting and seeing it face to
face, you cannot possibly fathom the greatness.
It is that moment that you get up close and all you can do is say, “wow,”
where it all comes together for you. I
am guessing that many of you have already seen the film. But if you have not, please take a look at it
and just enjoy it, not only for what it preaches, but for what it is, a
beautiful story of humanities capacity for hope and how that we can find it in
the direst of circumstances.
Definitely perfect Toast
Five Stars
*Next on the Top 5 “Glory”*
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