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The Shawshank Redemption... The Triumph Of Hope
BY MOLARA WOOD

THE Shawshank Redemption is firmly settled in the public consciousness as the most beloved Hollywood film of the nineties, and well on the road to becoming one of the most popular of all time. Such is the formidable reputation it has garnered to itself in just 10 years that it now overshadows other hot favourites from the same decade like Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects and Unforgiven.

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In the year when Forrest Gump cleaned up at The Oscars, The Shawshank Redemption found itself relegated to the position of an 'also ran'. Directed by Frank Darabont and with sterling performances by Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins, the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture. It won none. Freeman, nominated in the Best Actor category for his role in the film, lost out to Tom Hanks, who played the lovable simpleton in Forrest Gump.

The Academy's failure to recognise The Shawshank Redemption is now seen as one of the more regrettable Oscar oversights in cinema history. In a recent poll of 6,000 movie fans, it topped the list of the 'greatest' films never to win an Oscar. On the 'losers' podium, it found itself in such esteemed company as other memorably overlooked gems like The Color Purple, Psycho and The Great Escape.

Many other polls give an indication of the 'Shawshank phenomenon'. Readers of the influential movie magazine Empire have at various times voted it the best film of the 90s, and the fourth of all time, rating it better than Apocalypse Now or Battleship Potemkin. On the Internet Movie Database, it topped the poll of the 250 best films ever made; and was America's most rented video of 1995. The Shawshank Redemption went on to find a devoted worldwide audience via what its admirers call "the miracle of home video", as well as on television.

A low-key, old-fashioned story of a wrongly convicted man who triumphs over terrible adversity, The Shawshank Redemption failed to set the world alight on its release in 1994. It also suffers from a case of mistaken identity. 'Shinkshaw Rejection', 'Shrinkshank Reduction' and 'Shoeshine Redemption' are some of the ways that fans inadvertently refer to the film when approaching its stars. "A technical flop," the film only recouped $18m of its $25m investment at the box office on release, at a time when 'hits' were making $100m on average. It had received only a lukewarm critical reception and audiences, it seemed, could not be persuaded to go and watch what they thought would be a depressing two-and-half hours film about a prison break.

The story of the film's subsequent rise is one that mirrors its redemptive message. According to film critic and Shawshank... 'expert' Mark Kermode, the movie "seems to have died only to rise again as the unlikely saviour of the 90s' cinema." Millions now speak of The Shawshank Redemption with an almost religious reverence, though few actually saw the film on its initial cinema release. But gradually, people came into contact with this 'slow-burner' of a movie on video and television and felt compelled to tell others about it. And, sped on to modern classic status by word of mouth, the film's triumph is ultimately the triumph of the audience.

The Shawshank Redemption started life as a novella by master of horror, Stephen King. Originally titled Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption, it was part of a collection of short stories, Different Seasons, published by King in 1982. In it, the character that became Andy Dufresne in the movie is an innocent man in prison who escapes into dreams of the movies, both literally and metaphorically. Red-haired Rita Hayworth was one of Hollywood's greatest sex symbols of the 40s and the 50s - part of the timespan covered in the movie. She starred in the classic, Gilda, and was married to the Aga Khan.

Stephen King has a long writerly collaboration with the movie industry, with million-dollar film rights paid by major Hollywood studios for movie adaptations of his books like Carrie and The Shining. But he extended a generous offer to budding film students, allowing them to film his short stories for only $1, as long as he retained the rights. Frank Darabont was one of the students who took King up on the offer. Years later, he went back to the author to negotiate a proper film deal for Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption.

After adapting the story into a screenplay, Darabont realised that the original title would not work. "A more magnificently clunky title could not be imagined," said one Hollywood insider. And so it was that Rita Hayworth was fleeced off the title. But she survives in the final film as the first poster girl to set Andy off on his dreams of freedom, and in a film clip from Gilda, watched by the inmates of Shawshank prison. As the years pass, so do the poster girls on Andy's cell wall. Marilyn Monroe's immortal pose from The Seven Year Itch is replaced by the famous image of Raquel Welch from 100 Million Years BC. After Andy's escape, Welch's poster would dramatically give up its secret; a tunnel dug into the wall that took nearly 20 years to construct, using a tiny rock hammer. Andy had been interested in geology - "the study of pressure and time." The character, we are told, had plenty of both.

Emerging from the sewage pipe tunnel into a creek, Andy stands with his hands outstretched as he is washed clean by rain. It is the signature scene of The Shawshank Redemption, and the spirit always soars at this symbolic rebirth of an innocent man. The rain scene has given rise to religious interpretations placing Andy Dufresne as a Christ-like figure. Like the Christian believer, Morgan Freeman's character is attracted to Andy, who talks of escape to a Mexican town on the Pacific coast, Zihuatanejo. Zihuatanejo is the film's paradise, a place without memory where the two men's prison sentences will be forgiven and forgotten.

Another scene shows Andy playing Mozart's Marriage of Figaro on the public address system. It is a moment of transcendence in which the walls of Shawshank melt away and the prisoners feel like free men. The scene would be echoed later in 1995's serial killer hit, Se7en, also featuring Morgan Freeman.

After his escape, Andy takes revenge on the Bible-thumping Chief Warden of Shawshank - the villain of the film. It also becomes clear that his stay in the prison has transformed every life there, especially that of his friend, Red. Having given up any hope of ever being paroled, Red believes that: "Hope is a dangerous thing, hope can drive a man insane." But Andy proves him wrong, insisting that: "Hope is good thing. Maybe the best thing. And no good thing ever dies." The two are reunited on the beach in Zihuatanejo in the film's celebratory closing sequence; their long-term friendship is a rare cinematic depiction of profound love between men - without any homo-erotic undertones. "It was a love relationship between Andy and Red," says Freeman. "It goes deeper than just friendship. People develop that kind of thing in life and death situations."
Central to the on-screen chemistry are the two actors in the lead roles. Intelligent, enigmatic and one of Hollywood's social consciences, Tim Robbins is perfect as the brutalised, innocent Andy. The character of Red was written in the novella and screenplay as a white Irish man. Giving the role to the black Morgan Freeman was an inspired piece of casting by Frank Darabont. The director says: "Morgan's performance is so indelible... I can't imagine anybody else playing that part."
Freeman has been unfairly criticised by certain sections of black America for playing benevolent black men in the service of white people in movies, most notably in Driving Miss Daisy. But it was a heartfelt film for which the actor got his first Oscar nomination, and which made him a star at the late age of 52. What cannot be contested, however, is a unique human quality to the actor, one which has helped transform every film he has featured in, including Unforgiven. It is that same, almost legendary decency that lifted Se7en above the usual gory 'slasher' movie; and made Freeman the first black actor to play the role of God (Bruce Almighty) in a mainstream Hollywood movie. Even as an assassin in the off-beat Nurse Betty, he remains, amazingly, a kind man who falls in love with the woman he was contracted to kill. Morgan Freeman, it seems, has no bad bone in his body; an intrinsically good guy of cinema.

Darabont believes the actor's presence in The Shawshank Redemption "lent a gravitas to the film that would not have been there otherwise." Through Red's narration, it is the voice of Freeman that guides the audience through the film. The narration is itself one of the unforgettable features of the movie. "With Morgan telling you a story you get a great edge, because he's got this wonderful integrity," says Darabont. Freeman regularly turns down lucrative advertising deals because he does not want to mislead people, as they tend to believe whatever he says. He is to play Nelson Mandela in the biopic, The Long Walk to Freedom.

Darabont has made many other films, including The Green Mile, all of which have been eclipsed by The Shawshank Redemption. Whatever the reason, audiences have an intense emotional reaction to this "fairytale of incarceration and emancipation," and view it as a modern allegory for personal and spiritual salvation. "People see it as a metaphor for their lives," observes the filmmaker. They "project their own trials and tribulations into it and conversely, draw strength from it."
For Tim Robbins, the film's message is that, with hope and persistence, "you can find your own Zihuatanejo, you can find your own place in the sun." To mark ten triumphant years of The Shawshank Redemption, the film re-opened in American cinemas last September. A special tenth anniversary DVD has also been released.

For a decade now, audiences and critics have grappled with the question: what on earth is so great about The Shawshank Redemption? But it continues to cast its spell. Part of the film's secret is that it invites repeated viewing. So, however many times one has seen it before, it may be time to see it again. One can never get too much of The Shawshank Redemption. Remember, hope is a good thing.