The Shawshank Redemption
The Shawshank Redemption
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For the novella of the same name, see Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.
The Shawshank Redemption
Directed by Frank Darabont
Produced by Niki Marvin
Written by Frank Darabont (screenplay)
Stephen King (original novella)
Starring Tim Robbins
Morgan Freeman
Bob Gunton
Clancy Brown
William Sadler
Gil Bellows
James Whitmore
Music by Thomas Newman
Cinematography Roger Deakins
Editing by Richard Francis-Bruce
Distributed by Columbia Pictures (later Warner Bros. Pictures)
Release date(s) September 10, 1994
Running time 142 minutes
Language English
Budget $25,000,000
IMDb profile
The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 movie, written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The film stars Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne and Morgan Freeman as Ellis "Red" Redding.
The plot of Shawshank revolves around Andy Dufresne's life in prison after being convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover. Despite a poor box office reception (partially due to competition from the commercial success of films such as Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, and Speed), Shawshank received favourable reviews from critics and enjoyed a remarkable life on cable television, home video, and DVD. It is consistently ranked amongst the finest movies of all time.
Contents [hide]
1 Plot
2 Cast and crew
2.1 Cast
2.2 Crew
3 Production
4 Interpretations
4.1 Integrity
4.2 Christian interpretations
5 Critical Reaction
6 References in popular culture
7 Trivia
8 References
9 Further reading
10 See also
11 External links
[edit] Plot
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The movie spans over 20 years, and begins with Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) on trial for the murder of his wife and her lover, a crime of which he claims to be innocent in spite of what seems like overwhelming evidence. He is sentenced to serve two consecutive life sentences at Shawshank, a fictitious prison in Maine.
The action shifts to the prison where Red (Morgan Freeman) attempts to persuade a parole board that he has been rehabilitated by his time in prison, but he fails as he has at every previous hearing. Andy arrives in a busload of new prisoners, and the other inmates gather around the bus as it arrives, cheering in glee to make the new arrivals uncomfortable. A group of inmates place bets on which new prisoner will be the first to break down that night, and Red bets on Andy Dufresne.
Warden Sam Norton (Bob Gunton) gathers the new arrivals and tells them only one rule ("No blasphemy"), and then stands idly by as the captain of the guard, Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown), abuses a new arrival who asked a trivial question. The inmates are marched naked to their cells, and one new arrival breaks down and is savagely beaten by Hadley for it. It is found out the next day that the arrival died in the infirmary, because no one was around to take care of him.
In Shawshank Andy keeps to himself until he wants to acquire some contraband. He befriends Red, who has connections to obtain contraband, and several other prisoners including Brooks Hatlen, played by James Whitmore. In his first few years in prison, Andy endures repeated beatings, gang rapings, and gang rape attempts by a group of aggressive inmates known as the sisters, led by Bogs (Mark Rolston).
Red arranges for himself, Dufresne, and others to have their names chosen for work tarring the roof of a prison building. As they work, Dufresne overhears Captain Hadley complaining about his taxes; he has received a large amount of money and is afraid that the IRS will take a good portion of it. When Dufresne steps away from his crew, Hadley threatens to throw him off the roof. Dufresne, however, merely recommends that Hadley trust the money to his wife, because the IRS will not tax a gift to a spouse. Andy volunteers to help Hadley with his taxes, in exchange for three beers for each man working; Hadley complies, and the prisoners get their beer.
Andy's former life as a banker and his knowledge of accounting and income taxes eventually come to the attention of every guard in the prison, and, finally, the Warden. His financial knowledge earns him freedom from mistreatment by other prisoners, but he also becomes deeply involved in Norton's illegal money-laundering operations.
The Warden keeps a safe behind an embroidered plaque by his wife, reading "Thy Judgement cometh, and that right soon." When working for the Warden, Andy creates a false identity - a 'phantom', as he puts it - so the Warden can hide the money laundered. All information about the scandal is kept behind the Warden's safe.
Andy asks Red for the Rita Hayworth posterTime passes. Brooks's parole is approved, but he doesn't want to leave prison and threatens to kill another inmate in order to stay at Shawshank; however, Andy persuades him to let the other man go. The old man is eventually released from prison, but after spending over 50 years behind bars, the elderly convict finds that the normal world is no place for him, and, in a letter to his friends at the prison, declares that he's tired of being afraid all the time; "I've decided not to stay," Brooks closes. Having carved the phrase "Brooks was here," into the wall in the half-way house, he hangs himself.
Andy has made repeated letters once a week to the State Senate to get funding for the prison library; finally, they receive hundreds of books and several records in an attempt to get him to stop writing. While getting the books organized in the Warden's office, Andy comes across a record of the Mozart opera Le Nozze di Figaro (Marriage of Figaro) and plays Sull'aria, a duettino. He locks all doors into the room and turns on the intercom and all public address systems; the music fills the entire prison. When the Warden arrives and orders Andy to turn off the record player, Andy defiantly increases the volume. Hadley then breaks through the door and apprehends Dufresne; Andy is then sent to solitary confinement.
A young prisoner, Tommy (Gil Bellows), enters Shawshank in the 1960s, and Andy helps him try to get a G.E.D. Tommy tells Andy that he has met the man that actually killed his wife and her lover; this could be used to free him, or at least get him a new trial. It is only at this point that it is made totally explicit that Andy is in fact innocent of the murders, as he has maintained. Andy approaches the warden for help, but the warden is unwilling to lose Andy's financial assistance with his illicit schemes or risk being exposed and sends Andy to solitary confinement for a month, which is longer than the prisoners seem to know of. While Andy is in solitary, Tommy passes his G.E.D. with a C+, but the warden has him killed (by Hadley) before he can pass on any information. The Warden then gives Andy another month in solitary.
After his release from solitary confinement, Andy's disposition is visibly changed; he is now more sullen than before. He tells Red that, if he ever makes parole, to go to a field in Maine and look for a rock made of volcanic glass in a granite stone wall. After this, he orders a length of rope, stirring worry among his friends that he will kill himself. That night, he works with the Warden's illegal financing, and is ordered to clean a suit and shine a pair of dress shoes.
The following day, Andy doesn't come out of his cell for morning roll call. When an officer goes to check, Andy has disappeared. The Warden has no knowledge of this absence until he finds Andy's ragged shoes in place of the dress shoes; as soon as he finds them, the siren sounds, signaling Dufresne's escape. While questioning Red, the Warden blasphemes, breaking his very own rule, and begins throwing Andy's whittled stones around the room. However, when he throws one at a poster of Raquel Welch on the wall, it passes through, rather than bouncing off of the stone wall. The Warden rips the poster away, revealing a hole in the wall just large enough for a man to fit through.
At this point, how Andy escapes is revealed; from his first night with the rock hammer, Andy has chipped away at the wall. When the hole began to get suspicious, Andy had put up the poster of Rita Hayworth to hide it. The night of his escape, Dufresne secretly replaced the Warden's records of finances with something else, placing the duplicates in the Warden's safe. He wore the suit underneath his clothes as he came back to his cell, and switched his own shoes out. He wore them into his cell, but no one bothered to look at his feet. After placing the records, the suit, and a chess set into a watertight plastic bag, he bound it to his foot with the rope he previously ordered and then Andy crawled through the hole and found himself in the prison plumbing system. He broke his way into the sewage pipe, timing his strikes with thunder outside so as not to be heard. Then, he crawled for five-hundred yards down the sewage pipe into a nearby run-off stream. All the authorities found were a bar of soap, his old clothes, and the rock hammer, nearly worn away.
After his escape, he assumed the identity of the phantom - wearing the Warden's suit - and took $370,000 out of the Warden's accounts. He also forwarded the stolen paperwork and information on Tommy's murder to the local newspaper, which quickly printed a news story on the front page and notified authorities.
The Warden reads the story and quickly opens the safe. Inside - rather than his real records - is Dufresne's bible. A note from Andy is scrawled in the cover; "You were right; salvation lay within." Further in, fittingly beginning in the book of Exodus, pages are cut in the shape of a rock hammer, where Andy had hidden it. The Warden watches as police arrest Hadley, but he has other plans. As the police come up to arrest him, he loads a revolver and stands ready to fight. However, at the last minute, he puts the gun to his own neck and shoots himself.
At Red's latest parole, the entire board has been replaced. Rather than eagerly asking for parole, Red remarks that he doesn't care what happens to him. When asked if he has been rehabilitated, he says rehabilitated "is a bullshit word". His parole is approved, and he is sent to a halfway house, to the same room where Brooks had died. After working as a grocery store employee, he remembers what Andy had asked for him to do. Red goes to the field in Maine, digs under the volcanic glass rock and finds a box, hidden by Andy, that contains enough money for him to leave Maine and join Andy in Mexico.
Before leaving for Mexico, Red carves into the wall next to Brooks' final message, "So was Red." The final shot shows Red meeting Andy once again on the Pacific shoreline.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For the novella of the same name, see Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.
The Shawshank Redemption
Directed by Frank Darabont
Produced by Niki Marvin
Written by Frank Darabont (screenplay)
Stephen King (original novella)
Starring Tim Robbins
Morgan Freeman
Bob Gunton
Clancy Brown
William Sadler
Gil Bellows
James Whitmore
Music by Thomas Newman
Cinematography Roger Deakins
Editing by Richard Francis-Bruce
Distributed by Columbia Pictures (later Warner Bros. Pictures)
Release date(s) September 10, 1994
Running time 142 minutes
Language English
Budget $25,000,000
IMDb profile
The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 movie, written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The film stars Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne and Morgan Freeman as Ellis "Red" Redding.
The plot of Shawshank revolves around Andy Dufresne's life in prison after being convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover. Despite a poor box office reception (partially due to competition from the commercial success of films such as Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, and Speed), Shawshank received favourable reviews from critics and enjoyed a remarkable life on cable television, home video, and DVD. It is consistently ranked amongst the finest movies of all time.
Contents [hide]
1 Plot
2 Cast and crew
2.1 Cast
2.2 Crew
3 Production
4 Interpretations
4.1 Integrity
4.2 Christian interpretations
5 Critical Reaction
6 References in popular culture
7 Trivia
8 References
9 Further reading
10 See also
11 External links
[edit] Plot
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The movie spans over 20 years, and begins with Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) on trial for the murder of his wife and her lover, a crime of which he claims to be innocent in spite of what seems like overwhelming evidence. He is sentenced to serve two consecutive life sentences at Shawshank, a fictitious prison in Maine.
The action shifts to the prison where Red (Morgan Freeman) attempts to persuade a parole board that he has been rehabilitated by his time in prison, but he fails as he has at every previous hearing. Andy arrives in a busload of new prisoners, and the other inmates gather around the bus as it arrives, cheering in glee to make the new arrivals uncomfortable. A group of inmates place bets on which new prisoner will be the first to break down that night, and Red bets on Andy Dufresne.
Warden Sam Norton (Bob Gunton) gathers the new arrivals and tells them only one rule ("No blasphemy"), and then stands idly by as the captain of the guard, Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown), abuses a new arrival who asked a trivial question. The inmates are marched naked to their cells, and one new arrival breaks down and is savagely beaten by Hadley for it. It is found out the next day that the arrival died in the infirmary, because no one was around to take care of him.
In Shawshank Andy keeps to himself until he wants to acquire some contraband. He befriends Red, who has connections to obtain contraband, and several other prisoners including Brooks Hatlen, played by James Whitmore. In his first few years in prison, Andy endures repeated beatings, gang rapings, and gang rape attempts by a group of aggressive inmates known as the sisters, led by Bogs (Mark Rolston).
Red arranges for himself, Dufresne, and others to have their names chosen for work tarring the roof of a prison building. As they work, Dufresne overhears Captain Hadley complaining about his taxes; he has received a large amount of money and is afraid that the IRS will take a good portion of it. When Dufresne steps away from his crew, Hadley threatens to throw him off the roof. Dufresne, however, merely recommends that Hadley trust the money to his wife, because the IRS will not tax a gift to a spouse. Andy volunteers to help Hadley with his taxes, in exchange for three beers for each man working; Hadley complies, and the prisoners get their beer.
Andy's former life as a banker and his knowledge of accounting and income taxes eventually come to the attention of every guard in the prison, and, finally, the Warden. His financial knowledge earns him freedom from mistreatment by other prisoners, but he also becomes deeply involved in Norton's illegal money-laundering operations.
The Warden keeps a safe behind an embroidered plaque by his wife, reading "Thy Judgement cometh, and that right soon." When working for the Warden, Andy creates a false identity - a 'phantom', as he puts it - so the Warden can hide the money laundered. All information about the scandal is kept behind the Warden's safe.
Andy asks Red for the Rita Hayworth posterTime passes. Brooks's parole is approved, but he doesn't want to leave prison and threatens to kill another inmate in order to stay at Shawshank; however, Andy persuades him to let the other man go. The old man is eventually released from prison, but after spending over 50 years behind bars, the elderly convict finds that the normal world is no place for him, and, in a letter to his friends at the prison, declares that he's tired of being afraid all the time; "I've decided not to stay," Brooks closes. Having carved the phrase "Brooks was here," into the wall in the half-way house, he hangs himself.
Andy has made repeated letters once a week to the State Senate to get funding for the prison library; finally, they receive hundreds of books and several records in an attempt to get him to stop writing. While getting the books organized in the Warden's office, Andy comes across a record of the Mozart opera Le Nozze di Figaro (Marriage of Figaro) and plays Sull'aria, a duettino. He locks all doors into the room and turns on the intercom and all public address systems; the music fills the entire prison. When the Warden arrives and orders Andy to turn off the record player, Andy defiantly increases the volume. Hadley then breaks through the door and apprehends Dufresne; Andy is then sent to solitary confinement.
A young prisoner, Tommy (Gil Bellows), enters Shawshank in the 1960s, and Andy helps him try to get a G.E.D. Tommy tells Andy that he has met the man that actually killed his wife and her lover; this could be used to free him, or at least get him a new trial. It is only at this point that it is made totally explicit that Andy is in fact innocent of the murders, as he has maintained. Andy approaches the warden for help, but the warden is unwilling to lose Andy's financial assistance with his illicit schemes or risk being exposed and sends Andy to solitary confinement for a month, which is longer than the prisoners seem to know of. While Andy is in solitary, Tommy passes his G.E.D. with a C+, but the warden has him killed (by Hadley) before he can pass on any information. The Warden then gives Andy another month in solitary.
After his release from solitary confinement, Andy's disposition is visibly changed; he is now more sullen than before. He tells Red that, if he ever makes parole, to go to a field in Maine and look for a rock made of volcanic glass in a granite stone wall. After this, he orders a length of rope, stirring worry among his friends that he will kill himself. That night, he works with the Warden's illegal financing, and is ordered to clean a suit and shine a pair of dress shoes.
The following day, Andy doesn't come out of his cell for morning roll call. When an officer goes to check, Andy has disappeared. The Warden has no knowledge of this absence until he finds Andy's ragged shoes in place of the dress shoes; as soon as he finds them, the siren sounds, signaling Dufresne's escape. While questioning Red, the Warden blasphemes, breaking his very own rule, and begins throwing Andy's whittled stones around the room. However, when he throws one at a poster of Raquel Welch on the wall, it passes through, rather than bouncing off of the stone wall. The Warden rips the poster away, revealing a hole in the wall just large enough for a man to fit through.
At this point, how Andy escapes is revealed; from his first night with the rock hammer, Andy has chipped away at the wall. When the hole began to get suspicious, Andy had put up the poster of Rita Hayworth to hide it. The night of his escape, Dufresne secretly replaced the Warden's records of finances with something else, placing the duplicates in the Warden's safe. He wore the suit underneath his clothes as he came back to his cell, and switched his own shoes out. He wore them into his cell, but no one bothered to look at his feet. After placing the records, the suit, and a chess set into a watertight plastic bag, he bound it to his foot with the rope he previously ordered and then Andy crawled through the hole and found himself in the prison plumbing system. He broke his way into the sewage pipe, timing his strikes with thunder outside so as not to be heard. Then, he crawled for five-hundred yards down the sewage pipe into a nearby run-off stream. All the authorities found were a bar of soap, his old clothes, and the rock hammer, nearly worn away.
After his escape, he assumed the identity of the phantom - wearing the Warden's suit - and took $370,000 out of the Warden's accounts. He also forwarded the stolen paperwork and information on Tommy's murder to the local newspaper, which quickly printed a news story on the front page and notified authorities.
The Warden reads the story and quickly opens the safe. Inside - rather than his real records - is Dufresne's bible. A note from Andy is scrawled in the cover; "You were right; salvation lay within." Further in, fittingly beginning in the book of Exodus, pages are cut in the shape of a rock hammer, where Andy had hidden it. The Warden watches as police arrest Hadley, but he has other plans. As the police come up to arrest him, he loads a revolver and stands ready to fight. However, at the last minute, he puts the gun to his own neck and shoots himself.
At Red's latest parole, the entire board has been replaced. Rather than eagerly asking for parole, Red remarks that he doesn't care what happens to him. When asked if he has been rehabilitated, he says rehabilitated "is a bullshit word". His parole is approved, and he is sent to a halfway house, to the same room where Brooks had died. After working as a grocery store employee, he remembers what Andy had asked for him to do. Red goes to the field in Maine, digs under the volcanic glass rock and finds a box, hidden by Andy, that contains enough money for him to leave Maine and join Andy in Mexico.
Before leaving for Mexico, Red carves into the wall next to Brooks' final message, "So was Red." The final shot shows Red meeting Andy once again on the Pacific shoreline.
