The Shawshank Redemption. - movie reviews

Christian Century, Nov 22, 1995 by Jennifer Rike

CRITICS HAVE lauded The Shawshank Redemption more for the quality of the directing and cinematograpby than for any surprises the script offers. One scene follows another with seamless ease, guided by an unobtrusive but engaging sound track. Nevertheless, the film is striking for the way it evokes the power of hope. Both it and The War, a less widely acclaimed film, provoke viewers to wonder about hope's foundations and dynamics.

Andrew Dufresne, a young bank executive (played by Tim Robbins), is convicted of murdering his beautiful wife and her lover, and receives two life sentences in the maximum-security Shawshank prison. Shortly after his arrival at Shawshank, Andy asks Red (Morgan Freeman), a black man with the uncanny ability to acquire things from the outside world, to procure a rock hammer so that Andy can carry on his hobby-rock carving. Andy's singularly aloof, casual but dignified demeanor earns Red's deference and, eventually, friendship. Unfortunately, these same qualities also attract Shawshank's resident "sisters," whose brutal rapes Andy resists with a determination undaunted by failure.

When the six-inch-long rock hammer arrives, Red muses that Andy might use it to dig his way out in, oh, about 600 years. Andy seems to make peace with prison by using his financial skills. He offers his knowledge of tax law to others, wins the protection of the guards and frees himself from the sisters' tyranny. Eventually even Warden Norton (Bob Gunton) comes to trust him after Andy ironically acknowledges Norton's lordship over the prison by citing Mark 13 during a cell search, "Watch ye, therefore, for ye know not when the master cometh," and by telling the departing warden, "Salvation lies within."

Norton soon enlists Andy in laundering money from his various scams, and Andy uses the slight freedom this gives him to build up the prison library and help other inmates earn their high school diplomas. Nevertheless, prison life remains brutal and apparently endless. Andy's one apparent hope for release is dashed when the warden murders the only witness who can clear him. Yet through the tranquil veneer of Andy's demeanor shines his quiet resolve not to rest content with prison life.

Does salvation lie within? Is Andy being truthful, duplicitous or merely ironical? And what does such salvation have to do with the mode of redemption so central to the film--escape from Shawshank? The prison's name highlights these mysteries. "Shaw" is an archaic term for a thicket of bushes or trees; "shank" means the straight and narrow part of any object or, colloquially, the end of anything, as in "the shank of a journey." Andy's journey out of the prison thicket has both everything and nothing to do with digging a tunnel. It begins with his true protestations of innocence and concludes with his equally true confession of guilt to the only man capable of giving absolution--a man equally honest about his own guilt. And Andy's journey is fueled by what is in shortest supply in prison and threatens to drive its inmates mad: hope. The film makes us wonder what creates and sustains Andy's hope and what enables him to infect some with it but not others.

Another figure imprisoned by guilt Abut fueled by hope appears in The War. Steven Simmons (played by Kevin Costner) returns to rural Mississippi after the Vietnam war. He is captive to terrifying flashbacks of combat, particularly to the moment when he abandoned his best friend to certain death. His torment renders him incapable of holding a job or saving the family home.

After a brief stay in a mental hospital, Steven struggles to find a job and another house for his family, without apparent success. He struggles to leave the war behind, but war will not leave him. His children, Stuart and Lidia, feud with the neighbor Lipnicky kids, chiefly over the treehouse they now see as their only real home. His attempts to stop the feud meet with only temporary success. Driven by unresolved guilt, he attempts to undo that prior abandonment and resolve his guilt by saving another with tragic results.

Despite this grim train of events, The War depicts a passage to peace made possible by hope and love. Steven transcends his personal tragedy by instilling in his children two convictions born of his hard-won wisdom and steadfast hope: the world is not against them, and everything they do will have consequences--for good or ill. We see these convictions bear fruit in the bonds of respect and friendship that grow among the dozen or so children in the film, and these bonds make the climactic scene work.

After watching the craziness inspired by the children's final battle over the treehouse, Stuart finally realizes the wisdom of his father's pacifism and his warning that "it only takes a split second to do something you'll regret for the rest of your life." Just then one of the "enemy" Lipnickys falls into mortal danger. Stu rushes to save the child, and is soon joined by Lidia, another Lipnicky and "someone" else.