Unlocking the gates to Shawshank

Some films are just born crowdpleasers. Case in point: The Shawshank Redemption, which is about as good a prison movie as you can get. But this flick uses more than colorful characters, suspenseful situations, and subjective you-are-there point of view to tell a riveting story. Many layers are waiting to be unraveled, which CineVerse attempted to do last night. Here's what we discovered:

HOW IS THIS FILM DIFFERENT FROM OTHER PRISON MOVIES THAT CAME BEFORE IT?
• It features a voiceover narration throughout that guides the viewer along, with a likable, homespun voice and vernacular that helps weave a wholly absorbing tale and which creates a more personal, emotional story.
• Interestingly, the narrator is arguably not the central character – Red is a third-party witness to the story of Andy Dufresne, the character whom we most identify and sympathize with, especially considering that Andy, we know, is innocent. We get the story from Red’s point of view, which makes it more interesting because Red is more credible as a grizzled, weathered, experienced inmate.
• Unlike other films about incarceration, which usually concern themselves from the start with an elaborate escape plan plot, this picture doesn’t try to tip its hat that the later payoff will be an escape; we see many years and even decades go by in which Andy and his friends are imprisoned, presumably without hope. Therefore, the main meat of this story concerns both psychologically and physically coping with an interminable life in prison. There’s enough action and interesting subplots and characters here to make for a fascinating two hours, but, unlike The Great Escape, Papillon, Escape From Alcatraz, or Stalag 17, this film isn’t necessarily tightly woven around a suspenseful plot concerned from the start with escape.
• Additionally, although many of those aforementioned prison movies do contain colorful characters, the main and even supporting roles in The Shawshank Redemption are finely chiseled with interesting details and backstories that create a chromatic tapestry of personalities: it could be the film’s greatest strength.
• That being said, however, the misdirection employed here that keeps you from prematurely guessing that Andy will eventually escape, and the clever details related to how he does it, make for an incredibly satisfying third act in which the audience feels Andy’s uplifting sense of release, freedom and vindication. This is one of the best revenge/comeuppance films ever made, and you don’t have to have been a former inmate or wrongly accused individual to appreciate these emotions.

HOW ARE ANDY AND RED PERFECTLY JUXTAPOSED CHARACTERS BASED ON THEIR DIFFERENCES?
• Andy is white, Red is African-American.
• Andy truly is innocent and wrongfully convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, while Red, as crowd-pleasing as he is, is a criminal who knows he has to pay his debt to society (in the original story, he cut the brakes on his wife’s car, leading to her death).
• Andy is younger, more sensitive and attuned to cultural sensibilities, more naïve and idealistic, book smart, and hopeful; Red is older, hardened and jaded, street smart, and more pessimistically realistic, which makes him dubious of hope.
• Red is a man who can get things in from the outside for others; Andy is a man who can get things out from the inside (his intelligence and hope) for others.
• Therein lies the crux of the film’s message: making Red, a doubting Thomas, see the light of hope, as exemplified in his savior, Andy. Andy redeems Red, not by helping him escape from the prison, but by making him believe in a life worth living outside the prison walls.

WHAT’S SIGNIFICANT ABOUT THE FACT THAT THE LAST SCENE TAKES PLACE IN MEXICO BETWEEN JUST THE TWO MAIN CHARACTERS?
• The fact that their reunion takes place outside of the boundaries of the familiar (the United States) and within a paradise-like setting is important: it suggests that they’ve graduated to a metaphorical “heaven,” an afterlife-of-sorts on earth far removed from their familiar place of incarceration.
• It’s also wise to only show the two of them on the beach, as if this is their own private paradise that they’ve earned.
• In the original story, Red is following Andy’s hidden trail and is hopeful that he will rendezvous with his friend eventually some day. This ending was changed for the film because viewers responded more enthusiastically to a visible reunion between the two that was conclusive.

Other films and works directed by Frank Darabont
• The Green Mile
• The Majestic
• The Mist

OTHER NOTABLE FILMS BASED ON STEPHEN KING STORIES
• Carrie
• The Shining
• Misery
• Dolores Claiborne
• Stand by Me
• The Dead Zone
• Salem’s Lot
• 1408