The Shawshank Redemption: A Modern Day “The Count of Monte Cristo”
Based on a Stephen King novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, it feels nothing like a Stephen King story. The Shawshank Redemption trades in a haunted hotel, featured in The Shining, and a murdering child cult, present in Children of The Corn, for a more realistic setting in the Shawshank Penitentiary. For a director that didn’t have much previous success with film, Frank Darabont managed to turn Stephen King’s short novel into a masterpiece. Darabont is relatively unknown to many as a director and his only other work as popular as this film would be his executive production of The Walking Dead’s first two seasons. Despite these facts, Darabont doesn’t show a lack of experience in any part of this film.
Shawshank’s first success happened in the casting of Morgan Freeman as Red. Not only playing the character flawlessly, Freeman also narrates using a deep and powerful voice with a unique warmth to it. The other actors were also felt much in place like how James Whitmore played the gentle librarian, Brooks, and Bob Gunton playing the corrupt prison warden. Another technical element this film perfected was the script. Lines like “I believe in two things: discipline and the Bible. Here you’ll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord; your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank.” say exactly what needs to be said to reveal characters without any waste. Every dialogue in this movie has some reason it was said in order to develop the characters or the plot more.
Aside from Shawshank’s other obvious strengths that are noticed by just about everyone that has seen it, a less noticeable strength would be that it is so original. Sure, The Count of Monte Cristo (even referenced in part of the film) has a similar overall theme to The Shawshank Redemption, but Shawshank focuses more on positive life messages than just the sweet taste of revenge. This really makes more sense for the movie because Andy is presented as a very innocent character, being that he is harmless and also innocent of his crime. Because Andy is a pure-hearted character, his story teaches lessons that are strictly positive to the audience. Numerous examples could be cited but a couple of lessons Andy teaches could be that patience is a virtue and also to never give up hope when times get tough.
The Shawshank Redemption is nothing short of a classic that can be watched over and over again to get more and more out of it. In my personal opinion, this film should be seen by anyone who hasn’t seen it and watched again for the rest of you who have. On a final note, I leave you with a quote that hopefully will inspire you today said by Andy Dufresne, “ Get busy living, or get busy dying”.
