The Shawshank Redemption — A synopsis
This 1994 movie with a 9.3 out of 10 rating on IMDB is hard to miss your attention. It’s an adaptation of Stephen King’s “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” with minor changes, by Frank Darabont. This is a must watch movie for those who have deep friendships, believe in karma and know the power of hope and persistence.
Starting off with an old song and a court scene, you’d wonder what’s in store for you next! Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins), the VP of a Portland Bank on the ‘outside’, would be seen struggling to cope up with his fate ‘inside’. He was convicted of murdering his wife & her lover and worse — though he denied it, he can’t remember if he really did it as he was drunk. There’s a lot of debate about the innocence or guilt of Andy, but that is of little relevance to this plot where you would be taken on a journey which every struggling human being can connect to. Ellis Redding a.k.a “Red” played by Morgan Freeman enters the plot at Shawshank Prison while a Parole hearing is going on. He’s the con who arranges contraband in prison for a 20% markup.
The day Andy enters Shawshank; they’re greeted by other inmates who place bets on which of the ‘new fish’ would break down at night in their cells. Red would lose his bet on Andy as the latter would not make a sound at night. Bob Gunton plays the role of the Prison Warden — Samuel Norton, a hypocrite who hides his corruption ledger in a wall locker, hidden behind a hanging with a bible verse. Clancy Brown as the Captain of Guards ‘Byron Hadley’ would be seen beating an inmate to death on the first night, for breaking down and sobbing in his cell.
The first meeting of Red and Andy would be a turning point in this movie as Red tells him about ‘The Sisters’ (bull queers) who had noted Andy. Andy said that he was a ‘rock hound’ (Geology enthusiast) and needed a rock hammer. Red mistakes Andy’s ‘rock hammer’ to be a ‘lethal object’, is skeptical about many things and quotes a higher price only to realize the joke days later. He believed that it would take someone at least 600 years to tunnel through the wall with something as small as that. It was in that meeting Red realized Andy is not a ‘cold fish’; instead he was different from the rest of the prisoners and seemed to have accepted his fate without any remorse. He begins to like Andy. The first two years were the worst for Andy as he fought off ‘The Sisters’ who come to rape him, sometimes losing and ending up with bruises.
Andy’s breakthrough would come when he would convince Byron Hadley of helping him to set up a tax free gift to avoid tax on some money which his brother would have left him. The only ‘charges’ he asked was 3 beers for each of his co-workers. The deal is fixed as Hadley is about to push Andy down the roof for an apparently offensive question which Andy earlier asked him so he could find a way to help Hadley.
Now that Andy had earned the trust of the guards, they kept a watch on him. This would be realized when they beat up Bogs, one of ‘The Sisters’ who assaulted Andy at the Projectionist’s room while Red’s favourite “Gilda” went on. Andy had gone to meet Red for getting a Rita Hayworth poster. Bogs would end up paralyzed after that and none of ‘The Sisters’ dared to touch Andy, after that.
Word spreads around and the Warden got to know about Andy’s ‘skill’. He came to meet him in his cell on the pretext of tossing it in search of contraband goods. Andy held The Bible in hand, inside which he had hidden his ‘rock hammer’, thereby escaping the scrutiny. He quotes the verse Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh to the Warden as a favourite passage. This explains his situation that demands alertness (yes, he would be digging a tunnel which he hid behind the Rita Hayworth poster). The Warden took this to be the signal that Andy was expecting him to come soon and he makes an offer to Andy with another Bible verse, He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. Though he did not approve of the poster in Andy’s room, he decided Andy can have it as he wants Andy’s help in return for maintaining his ‘Corruption Ledgers’ and diverting the proceeds from the scams. He returns Andy’s bible saying “Salvation lays within”, before leaving.
Now Andy gets assigned to the prison library which was managed by another Con — Brooks Hatlen, an old man who kept a crow as a pet. He helped the Warden and the guards file tax returns and kept Red as his staff during tax season.
Brooks gets his Parole shortly, but is reluctant to go since he has become ‘institutionalized’. It’s a term which Red coined to refer to someone who has spent a long time in jail and therefore becomes dependent on the jail ecosystem knowing that they cannot survive outside. Brooks feels lonely and defeated outside, subsequently committing suicide after scribbling ‘Brooks was here’ near the roof of his half-way house.
It’s around this time that Andy got a cheque for $200 and some books & sundries as a response to his letters requesting for funds to expand the library. He had been writing a letter per week for the last 6 years despite his fellow inmates and the Warden telling him that he may not get it. Out of happiness, he plays one of the records — “marriage of Figaro” on the loudspeaker for which he gets condemned to the ‘hole’, solitary confinement in a dark room, for a while. He meets his friends after he gets out and tells them that he had Mozart in his heart, to keep him company and tells them that The Prison cannot take away hope from him, though Red is skeptical of his opinion. Red later gifted him a new poster of Marilyn Monroe.
Soon, Andy gets busy expanding his new library after he gets more funds from the committee, which came after he decided to write two letters per week asking for funds, instead of one as he had done earlier. They named it as ‘Brooks Hatlen Memorial Library’, which becomes the best prison library. He helped many inmates to get their high school equivalency diploma. Meanwhile he told Red about the scams which the Warden is into and how he helped the Warden by routing the funds through a fictitious person named Randall Stephens. The biggest scam was of The Warden getting kickbacks from private contractors to keep him away from bidding on contracts as he could easily get any contract by quoting a lower price due to prison inmates being the ‘slave labourers’.
One of Andy’s students Tommy, on hearing his ‘outside’ story from Red, tells him about a former cellmate at another prison named Elmo Blatch who was apparently the killer of Andy’s wife and her lover. Perhaps it’s the first time in this movie that Andy showed signs of emotions overpowering him. The Warden, who hears this does not want to give Andy a chance to get acquitted and tells the guards to lock him up in the hole for a month. He needed Andy to help him channel the illegitimate money.
Tommy later gets to know that he has passed his high school equivalency diploma with a “C” grade. He had not expected he would even pass the test. One night, Tommy gets killed by Hadley after he confirmed the story about Elmo Blatch and Andy’s innocence to the Warden. Andy is threatened by the Warden, the next day and emotionally broken, realizes he has no choice but to work for the Warden and carry on accounting for the scams.
After Andy returns from the hole, he tells Red about his dreams — of owning a hotel in Zihuatanejo, a Mexican beach city and taking the tourists on a boat which he re-builds. Red tells him to stop dreaming as he has lost hope in life. Andy then wanted Red to promise him to go to a hayfield in Buxton, Maine which had an Oak tree near the North wall. It was where Andy had buried something which he wanted Red to have it once he gets out. Red is doubtful of getting out in the near future as all his previous parole applications got rejected.
Red and his friends thought that Andy was depressed after being in prison without an opportunity to prove his innocence and that he had reached his breaking point where he was contemplating death. Heywood, who was unaware of Andy’s mental state till that time, told them that Andy had asked him for a length of rope that morning.
Andy replaces the Warden’s ledger, with his bible that night and steals his shoes and coat to escape through a tunnel he had dug through his cell wall. That would lead him to the sewage pipes which went out of the prison. He used the rope to tie all his essential possessions in a transparent plastic cover and drag them out. While Red stayed awake that rainy night, Andy was breaking up the sewage pipes to creep out, in sync with thunder. He crawled through 500 yards in that sewer pipe through all ‘shit smelling foulness’ to freedom. He came out and enjoyed the swim in the river and the rain, while discarding his prison clothes in the river.
The next morning, by the time the Warden deciphered Andy’s escape route hidden behind Raquel Welch’s poster in his cell, he had assumed the identity of the fictitious Randall Stephens and withdrawn all of Warden Norton’s scam proceeds from the banks. Apart from that, he mailed the corruption ledger of Warden Norton to a news daily called ‘Daily Bugle’. The corruption and murders at Shawshank prison hits the headlines the next day and leads to the arrest of Captain of Guards — Byron Hadley. Warden Norton however did not wish to surrender and he shot himself before his arrest. Before this he realized that Andy had got the best out of him by replacing the ledger with his Bible in the hidden wall locker.
Red got a blank postcard after a few days with the stamp of ‘Fort Hancock’, a place near the Mexican border and understands that Andy had crossed over to Mexico. Red misses Andy in the coming days and tries to cope up with it. While their friends would talk about Andy often, Red realizes the power of hope. He faces the next parole hearing and successfully gets a parole. Since he was also now ‘institutionalized’ like Brooks, he found it difficult to survive on the outside world and thought of ways to go back to prison, a place where he was comfortable. However, he was stopped by the promise he made to Andy and hitchhikes to the Buxton Hayfield in Maine, to find Andy had left him some money and a letter telling him to come to the Mexican City of Zihuatanejo to help him run the ‘project’.
Red decides to jump his parole, go to Mexico and meet Andy, undertaking an uncertain journey. He sees Brooks’ writing “Brooks was here” near the roof of his house and scribbles “So was Red” beneath it, before starting the journey. This was the journey of freedom for Red, full of hope that he can cross over to Mexico and meet his friend Andy — which he does, at a beach in Zihuatanejo as the movie ends.
Originally published at https://thecontemporaryviews.blogspot.com.
