Welcome

The Shawshank Redemption

This film is one of my all-time favourites. I have seen it many times and I never tire of it. The definition of the title is that Shawshank is the name of the prison and redemption means a state of being freed from the power of evil. There are several characters, but the two main ones are on the front cover. The story is narrated by a long-standing inmate named Red (Morgan Freeman) who is serving a life sentence in Shawshank State Penitentiary and he tells the story of Andy Dufresne’s (Tim Robbins) arrival and time in the prison. In 1947 banker Andy was given two consecutive life sentences for the murder of his wife and lover yet his innocent version of events falls on deaf ears. Initially Andy becomes a victim of brutality then as the years roll by his knowledge of financial matters become useful to the corrupt warden and his guards.

 The part that Red plays is that he smuggles prohibited items into the prison for a fee and he fills Andy’s requests for a rock hammer and polishing cloths for his hobby plus posters for the walls in his cell. Over the years Andy and Red become good friends. During Andy’s sentence a young convict is transferred to Shawshank and mentions a story about a man he shared a cell with in another prison who bragged about killing a banker’s wife and her lover.  The warden isn’t interested in this information which would free Andy who could then potentially tell the authorities about the money laundering within Shawshank, so he has the young man shot, making out he had tried to escape.

At one stage Andy tells Red of a place in Mexico, Zihuatanejo, where he would like to go if he ever got out and he told Red not to forget the name. One morning years later, Andy is missing from his cell. The warden is so angry that he throws one of Andy’s small rock sculptures at his latest poster and it passes straight through it detecting the tunnel that Andy had dug over his nineteen years of confinement. The prison later discovers that he had escaped through the sewer system into the surrounding marshes and disappeared without trace. What they didn’t know was that Andy, whilst doing the finances for the money laundering operation for the warden, had made a false identity and transferred thousands of dollars into several bank accounts. He had then posted the corrupt ledgers of money dealings pinpointing the warden and his guards as being guilty to a local newspaper just before he escaped.

Months later Red receives a blank postcard and he remembers the place in Mexico that his friend Andy had spoken about. It takes several more years before Red finally gets his parole hearing which said he was no longer a threat to society and he was released after serving more than sixty years. Red didn’t cope with being on the ‘outside’ as he was institutionalised. He finally goes to the tree that Andy had told him to look under for a rock that would be out of place. Underneath it Red discovers a tin containing a letter and money. At the end of the film you see Andy on a beautiful beach sanding down the hull of a boat. Red walks along the beach towards Andy with a small suitcase in his hand representing that he had hardly any belongings after spending all that time in prison. When Andy notices him, he immediately stops what he is doing, meets his old friend and they hug as free men.