Why is The Shawshank Redemption so good?

I saw The Shawshank Redemption for the first time when I was far too young. It was my mom’s favorite movie and she hadn’t seen it in a very long time so she popped it in and urged me to come sit with her and watch. It terrified me. I was scared mainly by the first half and the scenes about prison rape but the crushing disappointments that Andy and all the other prisoners experience weigh on your soul even at a young age. That was the first thing I noticed well re-watching for the first time since. It’s a painful movie. I’ve seen a few films like that, that just wrench your soul. They’re as hard to watch as any horror film just because of how realistically painful they are such as Capote (for different reasons) or Where The Day Takes You. Both are movies that I loved but wouldn’t necessarily watch again. That’s what The Shawshank Redemption is to me. At first I planned on writing a review for this film but halfway through I changed my mind. There’s just nothing I can say but praise. It’s ranked number one on IMDB’s 250 best films of all time list which I personally respect very much. I didn’t get it until my second viewing but now I do. What The Shawshank Redemption  does so well is tell a very long story. Reflecting back on the film I realized that that was what really hit me. The fact that the movie takes place over a course of thirty years and you really feel the time passing. Plenty happens to fill the movie but the span of events makes it so realistic that you can easily believe this is how prison life really is. I also noticed in my second viewing the very obvious message that I was previously to young to understand about our justice system, it’s screwed up. The film also exemplified for me the idea that we are all both good and evil and I loved the fact that the main villain of the movie is the man who in our society is depicted as the keeper of peace and upholder of justice. The entire film is ironic but not trying to be, every single character that graces the screen is both perfectly cast and marvelously portrayed. Frank Darabont the director convinced Stephen King to sell him the rights to The Shawshank Redemption novella so that he could write the script himself and then decided to take a pay cut so he could direct it as well. This was his first feature film and a passion project at that, but maybe that’s why it’s so good. There’s one line of dialogue I particularly liked near the end of the movie where Andy is  telling Red about when he proposed to his wife and he says something along the lines of,

“We had a picnic and made love under that big oak tree and then I asked her to marry me.”

It might just be me but I loved this line so much because I at least wouldn’t expect an upstanding wall street banker to propose to his girlfriend after sex under an oak tree. I’m sure that at some point someone told Darabont to cut that part out but he didn’t and it makes the movie better. All throughout the movie Andy is depicted as a good man and I liked that we’re reminded at the end of the film that even if he’s a good man he’s not a perfect saint. After all he may never have killed anybody but he did pick that gun up meaning that he at least thought about it. Even Andy, the most moral man in the entire film is far from perfect, or at least he is in the beginning. But as the title implies nobody is to far gone for redemption, even those that society deems the worst of us. So why is The Shawshank Redemption so darn good? Well it tells a very important and interesting story that most have never heard. The honesty and truth of it is evident in every scene and line of dialogue which is so different from so many other big studio films. Nothing is held back. And of course the twist at the end helps a bit too. I knew for sure that it was a great movie because at the end of it I was sobbing and only the best of movies provoke this reaction in me. This is a movie that will make you believe in the strength and goodness of the human spirit and that’s surprising considering it’s a film about murders. The last thing I’ll say on this is that The Shawshank Redemption is completely deserving of that top spot on IMDB.