05/23/10 - The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption (1994, 142 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/

In celebration of the conclusion of my undergraduate education I decide to watch The Shawshank Redemption. I've seen this film two times prior but the ending is one that I feel is fitting for my recent achievement.

The film follows Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), a man wrongly imprisoned in Shawshank Prison. There he meets Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman) and forms a good friendship. Warden Norton (Bob Gunton) and Captain Hadley (Clancy Brown) serve as the "bad guys" in the film since they are in charge of the prison. Smaller roles are given to some of the other inmates: Heywood (William Sadler), Tommy (Gil Bellows), Bogs Diamond (Mark Ralston), and Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore).

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, The Shawshank Redemption is a movie that builds and builds towards the ending. It's ending is perhaps one of my favorite endings to any movie ever. There's a couple important reasons for this. First off, The Shawshank Redemption is 142 minutes long which might seem like long but it's actually incredibly fitting. Andy actually escapes probably around the 115 minute mark leaving the rest of the movie to deal with Red's own "escape." But really the monumental moment is the recount of how Andy got out. And these 115 minutes are what I most remember about the film. This all comes down to pacing. Had the film been shorter it wouldn't have given us the time to really get to know Andy and to appreciate his escape. Every single scene here is important as it provides us with some detail about his life there. He has hardships but he also has some little victories. Little moments like the rooftop beer scene, the opera music playing or even the encounters with Bogs are important to show. This time serves to fully flesh out Andy's character so that we learn what he's really like. That way, when he actually breaks free it means that much more. If he were just some no name that we didn't care about it wouldn't mean probably half as much. It's somewhat fitting that I'll bring up The Godfather here (IMDb has The Shawshank Redemption at #1 and The Godfather at #2) as a reference to the pacing issue. Every single scene in The Godfather is important since it means something. Even the length of every single scene in The Godfather is important. The same thing is true here. Pacing is the biggest key to why The Shawshank Redemption is such a good film.

There's two minor quibbles that I have with this film. The first is the character of Tommy. I don't think this story line is handled that well. While I realize above I said every scene is important, I really think the Tommy scenes aren't done enough. Really there should be some more stuff here. I would guess that there was more in the novel but that it just didn't transfer to the screen since it would bloat the runtime even more. The thing here is that I just don't really care when Tommy dies. He's not established enough for me to care that the Warden gets him killed. For example, look at how the Brooks character is handled. There's probably really even less time devoted to Brooks than Tommy but this character comes off so much more powerful. He teaches the valuable lessons of "hope" and "institutionalized" that are prominent from this point on in the film. This character really makes you think about the consequences of the time at Shawshank while Tommy's character doesn't do this really at all. My next complaint is the ending with Red. I personally feel that it goes on just a tad bit too long. Up until Andy's escape the film has really been about Andy even though Red serves as narrator. Anyway, once Andy leaves a huge part of the emotional investment leaves as well. Red just can't carry the film himself and up until the moment that we see Andy again the film just doesn't have that emotional grip. Perhaps this is because we just had Andy outsmart the entire system (albeit very slowly) and come off as this incredibly cool guy and then he suddenly abandons us that makes Red's finale bland. The point is that the film drags here. However, I read that the director wanted an ambiguous ending with the final scene of Red riding in the bus. I think the actual ending works so much better. It's important that we see Andy one last time.

Overall, I gave this film a 9/10. The Shawshank Redemption is a lesson in pacing as it's all but perfect. However, I just don't think it has that extra something that pushes it up to a 10/10.