The Shawshank Redemption is Feel-Good Gibberish

We watched the The Shawshank Redemption last night, and frankly, upon this second viewing, I wasn’t impressed by the story. it is an entertaining film, but goes out of its way to avoid any useful lessons.

I’m not going to do a synopsis, so if you haven’t seen the film, you can read the Wikipedia entry. It’s based on a Stephen King novella, which I admittedly haven’t read, so I’m judging the film as a standalone entry, which is fine because a movie should hold its own weight without relying on external media for context (yes, I’m talking to you, Disney).

Anyway, The Shawshank Redemption is about justice, Or at least, that’s what I think it’s about, because the movie deliberately sabotages its own message on at least several crucial points, and that’s the problem. The Shawshank Redemption came out in 1994, the same year as Forest Gump, which is actually interesting, because both movies follow a similar trope. They seek out dramatic moments to elicit emotion from their audience, but are scared to death of controversy. They go to extreme lengths to avoid such controversy, which makes the stories a little pointless.

The Shawshank Redemption starts off with banker guy who is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. It’s actually very interesting how the film shows the protagonist’s memories of that fateful night, and his explanations for how he didn’t commit the crime. As far as the viewer knows in these first few minutes of the movie, there isn’t any evidence for him being innocent except that he says so. But, unfortunately, the movie later explains in no uncertain terms that banker guy is in fact absolutely innocent. I say unfortunately, because the story would have been much more interesting and controversial if banker guy had actually killed his wife and deserved to be in prison, but successfully escapes. That would leave moviegoers with a great question to debate amongst ourselves – was banker guy’s suffering throughout those 20 years in prison enough punishment for his drunken crime of passion, and he was sufficiently redeemed to deserve freedom?

Wait, if banker guy is innocent, why does the film have “redemption” in the title? What was he redeemed of if he was actually innocent all along? Maybe that’s meant to be a twist to mean that it’s actually a story of redemption for his friend Red, and he’s the real protagonist. That is possibly the explanation for the title of the film (and Stephen King’s story). The problem with that is Red does not have any kind of redemption arc either, and I don’t think being sad that he spent basically his whole life in prison is quite enough of a redemption in the absence of any action to prove it. Red’s only actual purpose in the movie is narrator. He doesn’t help banker guy or anyone else in any meaningful way except by accident.

Funnily enough, like with banker guy, the movie is scared to actually deal with the consequences of Red’s crime and refuses to even explain what it was beyond the bare-bone facts that it was a murder. Simply, the writers were too lazy to make their audience like Red despite his horrible crime, so refuse to discuss it. We can safely assume that, while Red isn’t innocent like banker guy, maybe it wasn’t a particularly bad murder, like maybe he was defending himself or accidentally killed someone in a fight. If Red murdered and robbed his grandma so he could buy drugs, the audience would rightfully dislike him and it would take a lot of skill to paint grandma slayer as a redeemed person. So instead, The Shawshank Redemption just avoids talking about Red’s crime altogether to give him a cheap benefit of the doubt.

Back to the banker guy for a moment. His innocence is “proved” by a new inmate who claims to have met the real murderer. There can be no doubt that he’s telling the truth and the evil prison warden goes so far as to kill him so he doesn’t testify and get banker guy released. I acknowledge this is an important plot point, and fuel’s banker guy’s risky escape plan on the end, but this could still have been done even if he was guilty. Maybe the new inmate was lying, or had simply mistaken the murder for a similar but different incident – but it still scares the prison warden enough to kill him anyway. That would be a particularly interesting development, because it would make banker guy somewhat directly responsible for the new inmate’s death. He did actually kill his wife, knows the new story is false but chooses to go along with it anyway, and the other guy dies as a result. But oh no, people having consequences for their actions! Can’t have that. Dostoevsky, this is not.

The villains aren’t any better. Prison warden is a Bible-thumping tyrant, and I assume that is faithful to the original Stephen King story. Bible thumper and psychotic clown are the only villains Steve knows how to write, and he thinks he’s so clever for it. Okay, so the warden is a hypocrite who quotes Bible verses. That isn’t clever. It’s dull, and a cheap attempt at shock level. Oh, there’s a guy who likes Jesus, but he’s actually evil. So clever! The warden gets a huge amount of screen time, but he fills it with generic bad guy lines to show that he’s bad. A writer with a little more imagination could have developed him into a very interesting villain. Especially because Red brings up the concept of prisoners being institutionalized by their environment.

A well-written prison warden could be an demonstration of that same institutionalization taking an effect on the guards. He started his career with good intentions and tried his best to be fair, but was gradually corrupted by the inherently cruel and awful nature of his job. But even when he’s been truly corrupted, the warden is able to engage in sufficient mental gymnastics to justify his behavior. For example, he engages in corrupt labor practices and takes bribes because his salary sucks, and he argues that kickbacks are a victimless crime. After a certain point, he’s so deep into his corruption that exposure would ruin him so he’s willing to kill to protect himself. That would have been much more interesting, but instead, he’s a sneering cartoon villain.

The senior guard isn’t any better of a villain. He’s a two-dimensional bully. I find the laziness of his character arc particularly unfortunate, because when I watched this movie for the first time I was really expecting some sort of friendship, or at least something resembling a relationship, to form between him and banker guy. See, the banker guy helps the guard avoid paying taxes on his inheritance. then a short time later, banker guy suffers a particularly brutal assault by a gang. Then the guard corners the ringleader and beats him so badly he’s paralyzed. That could and should have been an interesting character development – like maybe the guard was genuinely angry and that’s why he beat the ring leader so badly. But no, this plot point goes nowhere. But why? It would have been interesting to see the guard help banker guy in useful ways throughout the movie. That motivation could potentially even put the guard in direct conflict with his boss when he starts pushing for more violent methods to keep banker guy in line.

But see, as usual, the movie wants emotion but free of consequences. If the guard was developed too much as a human being, the audience might feel sad or conflicted when he’s arrested at the end.

On a related note about villains, the whole side story of banker guy being repeatedly attacked by the gang was pointless, and doesn’t contribute anything to his character development or the overall story. Those scenes could be entirely cut out, and the plot wouldn’t be affected at all, which is a storytelling sin. I think the writers just wanted the shock value of prison sodomy, but were too lazy to think about how that would impact the protagonist and the supporting characters.

But unsurprisingly, the movie engages in surface level cleverness that it probably, like the sodomy thing, inherited from the original Stephen King story. For example, banker guy makes a reference to the Count of Monte Cristo. Of course, this is Chekhov’s gun, or hammer, in this case. Banker guy spends years tunnelling like the count did, and eventually escapes by swimming away. That’s the masturbatory cleverness I’ve come to expect from King stories.

There’s a running joke throughout the movie that everyone in the prison is innocent. That’s pretty self-aware, because every prison movie features an innocent protagonist.

Ian Kummer

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