The Shawshank Redemption movie review

A banker convicted of uxoricide forms a friendship over a quarter century with a hardened convict, while maintaining his innocence and trying to remain hopeful through simple compassion.

Episode Transcript

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Can a film which is rated R for a host of obscenities, produced by a cast and crew of

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non-believers and which paints the only Christian as an evil hypocrite, be, in fact, the greatest
Christian movie ever made?
The Shashank Redemption is one of Hollywood's most beloved films.
According to public voting on IMDB, it ranks just above the godfather in the number one

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spot.
People are drawn to this film for its message of hope and enduring friendship.
Which remarkably come together in the Christian act of redemption.

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When Andy Defranc escapes after two hours of screen time, 19 years in the story, it
hits as a total twist.
There's no quintessential lead up or execution of a plan.
Andy just disappears.

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Given that escapes are endemic to prison films, viewers might have expected it.
But the Shashank Redemption in a sleight of hand turns attention elsewhere.
Contrary to every expectation, the prisoners of Shashank fear release.
While they may hate the walls of the prison, they're not seeking to escape from them either.

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This is embodied in Brooks.
After being locked up for 50 years, Brooks responds to his parole by attempting to kill
a friend.
Just so he can stay behind bars.

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For Brooks, freedom is an exile to a world he doesn't belong.
So when he ultimately finds himself in that exile, emptying alone, he sees no other option
but to hang himself.
This is the principal problem for the prisoners of Shashank.
And yet not for Andy Defranc.
Andy comes to Shashank as the innocent outsider and refuses to give up hope.

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He subverts the prison's dehumanizing system of rules and regulations, extending to his
fellow prisoners rare and extraordinary reminders of the outside world.
Cold beer after hot days work, angelic music over the prison speakers, new books to educate
men.
Andy's strength derives from his innocence.
But when at last, the warden erases evidence of his innocence.

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Andy appears to succumb to the same institutional pessimism of his fellow prisoners.

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He returns to his cell and there appears to hang himself.
That's when the unexpected occurs.
Instead of finding Andy dead, the cell is empty.
Now stop and think about that.
If you thought this film was just another prison flick, take another look.

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The film infuses Andy's escape with the symbolism of new birth.
Andy proceeds through a woman's womb and ends with his slipping head first from the
other end.
This symbolism fits within the film's larger allegory.
Prisoners enter Shashank like newborns, naked and coated in white.
They march you in naked as the day you were born.

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And they come to fear release with life's corresponding dread of death.
When his escape, Andy is born again and becomes a new man.
He appropriates the identity and wealth which viewers thought was set aside for the warden.

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And in taking on this new persona, Andy passes judgment on the warden and his hypocritical
system.
In the end, the warden performs on himself the fate that only moments before, the viewers
assume of the Andy's end.
Now look at the empty cell again.
It's an illusion to the empty tomb.

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Andy's escape is an echo of Jesus' resurrection.
But this alone isn't what makes Shashank the greatest Christian movie ever.
It's beyond the illusion where Shashank touches people in a way that gospel films don't.
Rather than ending with a resurrection, Shashank goes on to show why it matters.
It's not by accident that Andy, the only innocent man in Shashank, becomes the best friend of

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Red, the only guilty man.
It's Red and not Andy who needs to be redeemed.
Red-like Brooks is institutionalized.
In three parole hearings at the beginning, middle and end, the film demonstrates Red's

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transformation.
In his second, he admits to no longer being a danger to society, not because he is a better
man, but because like Brooks, he no longer looks forward to the outside world.

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But it's Andy's miraculous escape and his life on the outside which redeems Red.
In his final hearing, Red at last speaks as a free man.

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He no longer cares whether he remains or goes, whether he lives or dies.
The world outside no longer concerns him.
As Andy lives, Red can face what the future holds.
So when his time of release does come, it's hope in Andy which propels him beyond Brooks'
fate to a life in a world beyond Shashank.

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Is it obvious now why Red finds Andy working the wood of a fishing boat, all before an
eternal sea?
The Shashank Redemption is a parable, and like the parables of Jesus, it's seed which
opens in the right soil.