Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Frank Darabont
A film that rightly carries “redemption” in its name. One of the greatest works of mainstream Hollywood. You, kind of, feel redeemed yourself after having watched this masterpiece.
Tim Robbins is a great actor and he delivers one of his best performances as Andy Dufresne, a banker who is [wrongly] convicted for the murder of his own wife and her boyfriend. He is one of the two key characters of the story along with Red played by Morgan Freeman.
Morgan Freeman is truly a master class actor. Calling him a great actor is considering him much less than he really is. He communicates years of suffering through his eyes and at the same time an incredible self-confidence that those years have given him; and then you feel a friendliness and caring attitude oozing out of him. Freeman is the soul of the film.
Clancy Brown and Bob Gunton are not bad either.
The dialogs of the film are very impressive without being too dramatic. The lines uttered by Red in the end where he says “I want to talk to that boy…” are immortal as is “Get busy living or get busy dying” said by Dufresne.
The beauty of the film largely depends upon the beauty of the book it is based on written by Stephen King. It is one of most flawlessly written screenplays ever.
As you see the blue Pacific in the end you realize that the cinematography is very brilliant and it is so soothing to your eyes that you feel as if you are looking at a sea after yourself passing years of confinement in the dark.
And the end is totally a “redemption” where you want to run and hug Red when he arrives with open arms and then you want to hug Andy when you look at him and you really feel as if you have hugged them when they hug each other; and, that’s the moment when you realize that you have been through one of the best directed films ever. Frank Darabont is a great director indeed.
A truly excellent movie, one that made me comment upon somethng that I never understood before - Flawless Casting.
ReplyDeleteI have never been more assured that the most perfect actor was playing a role as with Robbins playing Dufresne. I absolutely wanted to stand up and clap and bow to him.
The story is great, though I don't know how much credit goes to King, since I haven't read the story. Interestingly it is a short story, not even a novel.
The redemption is in Andy's success, in Red's hope, in the victory against corruption. Unfortunately the film wasn't redeemed as it was overshadowed by a behemoth movie that stole the show that year - Forrest Gump. That movie (also one of the best I have ever seen) caught people's imagination and drew them away from Shawshank, as well as Pulp Fiction which also released that year, 1994 (some kind of 'annus mirabilis').