The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 American drama film written and directed by Frank Darabont and starring Tim Robbins andMorgan Freeman.

Adapted from the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, the film tells the story of Andy Dufresne, a banker who spends nearly two decades in Shawshank State Prison for the murder of his wife and her lover despite his claims of innocence. During his time at the prison, he befriends a fellow inmate, Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding, and finds himself protected by the guards after the warden begins using him in his money laundering operation.

Despite a lukewarm box office reception that was barely enough to cover its budget, the film received favorable reviews from critics, multiple award nominations, and has since enjoyed a remarkable life on cable television, VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray. It was included in theAmerican Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Movies 10th Anniversary Edition.^[2]

In chapter 17, Brooks was here, we witness first hand what toll past sin and the affects institutionalization has on a person.  Brooks, an admitted "old crook" is released after a long stretch at Shawshank and has regretfully come to realize that he has allowed his time there to define him rather than refine him.  With no sense of purpose or worth Brooks is unable to deal with real freedom or the world he cannot experience due to his constant fear of it.

Romans 8:14-18

Amplified Bible (AMP)

¹⁴For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

    ¹⁵For [the Spirit which] you have now received [is] not a spirit of slavery to put you once more in bondage to fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption [the Spirit producing sonship] in [the bliss of] which we cry, Abba (Father)! Father!

    ¹⁶The Spirit Himself [thus] testifies together with our own spirit, [assuring us] that we are children of God.

    ¹⁷And if we are [His] children, then we are [His] heirs also: heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ [sharing His inheritance with Him]; only we must share His suffering if we are to share His glory.

    ¹⁸[But what of that?] For I consider that the sufferings of this present time (this present life) are not worth being compared with the glory that is about to be revealed to us and in us and ^[g]for us and ^[h]conferred on us!

In chapter 20, The danger of hope, we see Andy's triumphant return from 2 weeks of solitary confinement.  Andy describes to the boys at chow that there are some places in this world that are not made of stone.  This should ring ironic since Andy considers himself somewhat of a rockhound even though Red tries to disparage Andy's charge with the ideal that hope has no place "on the inside".  

Romans 15:13

Amplified Bible (AMP)

¹³May the God of your hope so fill you with all joy and peace in believing [through the experience of your faith] that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound and be overflowing (bubbling over) with hope.

In chapter 38, "No good thing...", we find Red with the same decision to make that Brooks had years before him.  Unlike Brooks though, Red has had truth spoken into his life by the most uncharacteristic of friends, Andy.  Red follows through on a promise to Andy and in it finds the encouragement to truly live.  Hope becomes revealed to Red in a whole new perspective as he responds to the push of a friend and the seed planted years before.  

Hebrews 3:6
But Christ (the Messiah) was faithful over His [own Father's] house as a Son [and Master of it]. And it is we who are [now members] of this house, if we hold fast and firm to the end our joyful and exultant confidence and sense of triumph in our hope [in Christ].

EATING AND DRINKING THE FUTURE AT SHAWSHANK

 Hope, in Christian theology, is rightly contrasted with wishing. Both deal with a good and blessed future that is as yet unrealized. But whereas wishing is all full of chance and likelihoods of a possible happy turn of events, hope is certain because in Christ the good future has already been begun. In the NT, hope is based upon the resurrection, (1 Cor 15:19-20). The firstfruits of the restored new creation have already been brought in, via Christ's resurrection and gift of the Spirit.Those in him, are even now experiencing elements of the future. Such experiences are rightly called sacramental.

     Just as the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is a bridge between heaven and earth, between this world and the good future, so too there are other signs and seals of what surely will come in full.

     Whether unwittingly or not, (I think not), the great film, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION is about Hope and the sacramental foretaste's of redemption that can occur even in the most hellish of the World's dark places.

     Andy DuFrane is wrongly convicted for the murder of his wife. He is sent to Shawshank a maximum security prison run by brutish guards and, (in the only glaring flaw in an otherwise wonderful movie--WHY does Hollywood insist on doing this?), an outrageously hypocritical-Bible-quoting warden.

    As in any prison movie, the walls and bars and fences are virtually characters in the film. They are the symbols (signs and seals?) of hopelessness and oppression. Early on in the movie, they are featured especially prominently.

    Conversely, light and expanse (symbols of hope), are rare.

     As the film progresses, we have several scenes, which for a time, make the walls disappear. Through Andy's agency, he and his brother inmates work on a roof and enjoy a couple of beers at the brutish guards expense, beers that "Dissolved the walls. We felt like men. We felt that each man was on his own house. "And for a time, the sky is blue and you can see for miles.

     Another time Andy gets some Mozart records and plays an aria over the prison loud-speaker system. Like the beers, the music, dissolves the walls. Red, Andy's friend says, "I don't know what those ladies were singing. It was so beautiful, so deep, it couldn't be expressed in words. Made the walls dissolve. Every last man felt free."

     But such moments get you in trouble. We hear, "Hope is a dangerous thing," several times. Andy gives Red a harmonica to make his own music, and make his walls disappear, but Red does not dare play. The elixir of freedom and hope would be too strong and too painful. The prison is designed to take away hope and any who dare to try to have it get savaged by the system.

    Finally, "time, pressure, and a big girly poster" combine and Andy escapes. In an amazing reversal of the crucifixion/resurrection story, Andy first crawls through the grave, (Sheol perhaps), a 500 foot long sewage pipe, and upon his "resurrection," standing free and clean in the open night air, he does a crucifixion pose. 

     The Pacific Ocean is the place of bright and blessed future, the place hoped for. It is a sort of heaven. All light and expanse. To Mexicans Pacific is "Place of no memory."

     As is always true (on this side of "the other side") there is the tragic mixture of walls and expanse, darkness and light; and in the case of The Shawshank Redemption, violence and peace. There is a fair amount of violence and brutality in Shawshank. The language is also harsh. But this movie could not have been made with an absence of those elements. We *are* talking about a redemption from a hellish place. The movie is admirably restrained in this regard however. The camera does not linger lovingly on the dark side, it shows just enough to help us understand that hope in this kind of place would be a great and dangerous thing indeed.

     This is a GREAT film.

The Sabotage Of Church Signs

“MAKE A DIFFERENCE … ATTEND CHURCH REGULARLY”

Huh?

One of the churches in my city has this saying posted on a sign in front of their building. Why do we think this way? Does God teach this? I mean, if we were back in the days when Jesus was walking around Jerusalem, do you think He would have put up a sign saying, “MAKE A DIFFERENCE … ATTEND SYNAGOGUE REGULARLY”? Why do we have this tendency to pack everything in a box and label it “The Way,” the tendency to measure by our own rules, the tendency to put our denominational opinions (sometimes known as doctrine) before the truth?

[MY IDEA OF A SIGN]

I’ve said in the past that I think those signs in front of churches provide more entertainment than they do enlightenment. Some of the signs are just so pathetically cheesy: “PUSH—Pray Until Something Happens.” Other times it makes me angry to see us display sayings that only a believer could translate, like, “ARE YOU WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB?” What does that mean to someone who has no clue that we sometimes refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God and has no idea what blood has to do with being clean?

Just once I’d like to see some brave soul sabotage their church’s sign and put up something like this: “GOT HEAVY STUFF ON YOUR MIND? YOU’RE WELCOME HERE. THOSE WHO CUSS ARE WELCOME HERE. OH YEAH, SEX ADDICTS WELCOME TOO.” I’m thinking that Sunday morning service would be one for the record books … The regulars would either leave because they’re deeply offended or stick around to see what happens if some curious and wounded souls come in. (Maybe some of them would even stay to minister and love anyone who came through the doors … Now that would cause a shift in the normal Sunday circus!) The visitors would come in either full of cynicism or ready to step over the edge to hope just a little that “good” people will actually accept them as they are.

[WE’VE GOT IT BACKWARDS]

In the bookProphets and Lovers, Brennan Manning writes, “It is symptomatic in the Western world … the mass of people still pass Christianity by. Why? Because the visible presence of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit in Christians as a whole, apart from a few individuals, is no longer present.” 

They can see the lack of Jesus. Why can’t we? Why do we settle? Why are we expecting people who are lost to come to us? God says in the Bible that the believers should gather together to “stir one another up towards love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together …” I’m sorry, but did I miss something? I don’t see where Jesus commands us to bring the lost into our assembly by having a catchy marquee. As a matter of fact, He actually told the disciples to go and make disciples. He sent them out in twos to preach the Gospel. When exactly did we begin thinking that the only acceptable way is to have “bring a friend to church” Sundays? Why do we require people who don’t know God—and may not even be at a point where they want to know Him—to come to us on our terms? 

We’ve got it all backwards. 

We hide within church culture and think that is being “godly.” What God really says is for us to be in the world but not of its system. But instead we translate that as faithful church attendance, listening to Christian music, reading Christian novels, looking at Christian web sites and attending Christian conferences, and it never crosses our minds that all we are doing is gorging ourselves with the truth and forgetting or condemning people who do not know who the real Jesus is. At times the church reminds me of a situation in the movie The Shawshank Redemption. We get so used to being behind our walls that we don’t want to get out when we have freedom being offered to us.

Keith Green said it well in his song “Asleep in the Light”: Do you see? Do you see? All the people sinking down. Don’t you care? Don’t you care? Are you gonna let them drown? How can you be so numb not to care if they come? You close your eyes and pretend the job’s done. ‘Oh bless me Lord, bless me Lord.’ You know, it’s all I ever hear. No one aches, no one hurts, no one even sheds one tear. But He cries, He weeps, He bleeds, and He cares for your needs, and you just lay back and keep soaking it in. Can’t you see it’s such sin?! … The world is sleeping in the dark, but the church just can’t fight ’cause it’s asleep in the light. How can you be so dead when you’ve been so well fed? 

[MAKE A DIFFERENCE … LIVE IN FREEDOM.]

“It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore stand firm then and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery … you have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace” (Galatians 5:1, 4). Paul said it to the church back then, and he is saying it to us now. We have fallen from grace because somewhere along the way we were taught that we had to do certain things to please God, that we had to withdraw from people who don’t believe the same as we do and that some sins are more acceptable than others. 

It’s time to grow up now, to face our failures and sin as the body of Christ and step into the presence of the God who didn’t die simply “to make nicer people with better morals, but to make a community of prophets and lovers who step into the all consuming fire who is the Living God” (Manning). If we believe in the love and forgiveness and power of the God we proclaim, then let’s come to Him, humbled, and find ourselves in His love again so that we can pray with genuine fire once again, “Let your kingdom come; let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And He will come.

The reviews of most films nowadays are filled with meaningless hyperbole: "The greatest ever…", "awesome", "unbelievable". In the case of The Shawshank Redemption, it is only now, in the fullness of time, that the greatness of this film is finally coming into public consciousness as it takes its rightful place as one of the greatest films of all time.

Based on the screen adaptation of Stephen King's story Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.the theatrical release (1994) starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, is a powerful portrayal of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of utterly impossible odds.

Nominated for seven Academy Awards® including Best Picture--two Golden Globe nominations and one nomination for Screen Actors Guild Award in 1995. Nominated for best music, original score by Thomas Newman. Shawshank has found redemption in the court of public opinion.

According to an April 30, 1999 article by Stephen Schurr, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal, [t]he hugely popular site [Internet Movie Database], acquired by Amazon.com last year, is visited by more than three million separate visitors every month, according to Colin Needham, imdb's founder and managing editor.."Shawshank" has been among the top ten ever since its release in 1994, and has been No. 1 for nearly two years, save for a brief surge by "Star Wars" after its re-release and an occasional eclipse by "The Godfather."

The film's writer and director, Frank Darabont, has made superb use of double entendre--there are several scenes in the film where the audience is left pondering the obvious outcome when in fact, the director has something entirely different in mind. As such, the director has made use of his dramatic license and provided the audience with an artistic touch that borders on sheer brilliancy.

If there is one scene that captures the spirit, grandeur and majesty of the Shawshank Redemption, it is the scene were Andy Dufresne has fallen out of the sewer pipe and stumbles in the drainage ditch in the rain. Amid heavy lightning and thunder, removes his shirt, then undershirt and raises his hands and arms to the heavens. It is as if God himself has given sanction and ordained the event. The music itself crescendos to a majestic fever pitch and the audience is witnessing, if for only a very brief moment, a divine event wrought by the hand of God.

It is possible, that no single scene in the entire history of cinema so completely captures the spirit and essence of an entire film, as this one did.

One of the most compelling aspects of The Shawshank Redemption is, as the end-credits confidently assure us that the film is pure fiction and any similarity to any name or incident, or the character or biography of any person, is purely coincidental and unintentional. Yet one can confidently say, no person has ever walked away after seeing The Shawshank Redemption without wondering in the back of his or her mind, if this is a true story or at least based on small part on a true story. Is there some aspect of the film that is in fact true?

A 1993 congressional study by Representative Don Edwards, then Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, found that since 1973, 48 people were subsequently found innocent and re- leased from death row. Since 1993, an additional 45 people have been exonerated because of their innocence, bringing the total to 93 in the last 27 years.

Shawshank then, in one sense, is a resplendent allegory-a tool for looking at oneself and examining the truth.

The Shawshank Redemption is certainly one of the leading contenders, on a very short list, for the greatest movie of all time. A short list that includes The Godfather, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Titanic (11 Oscars® out of 14 nominations-tied most nominations of all time). While somewhat overlooked in 1995, Shawshank is an utterly brilliant film, a crown jewel, which cannot and should not be missed.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering into its prisons - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, (1821-1881, novelist and scholar).

Review by
Steven Michael 

'Shawshank Redemption' Tree On Its Last Limb

A tree in Ohio is in danger of dying. That wouldn't normally be news, but when the tree is the famous oak that played a major role in "The Shawshank Redemption," it is.

A harsh storm last week damaged the tree to the point where it might have to be cut down. Recent photos of the tree show that the trunk was split near the bottom and half the tree is now on the ground. Officials in Mansfield, where the tree is located, are currently working to save the tree.

The oak was featured prominently in the movie as the spot where Andy hid a box for Red with instructions on where to find him. It is now a major tourist attraction along with other spots around Mansfield, including the former penitentiary where the movie was shot.

For now, it looks as though the oak might be okay, and officials will certainly want to do what they can to save it. I guess you better get busy livin', or get busy dyin'...even if you're a tree.

BY: Andy Neuenschwander