The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

“Fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free.”

A former officemate had always urged me to watch The Shawshank Redemption knowing how much I love to bash institutions. It took me more than five years to do so. I guess this vacation is doing me good because finally I am able to relax and take my time catching up on the things I put in the backseat while I was busy working for private companies and getting undercompensated and unappreciated because of cost-cutting and you know, office politics. Time flies so fast and in two months’ time I will be back to my beloved country.

That office friend sure knows my tastes. The movie doesn’t disappoint. The whole time I was watching, I was put in a rollercoaster ride with different feelings thrown and and with the suspense killing me. Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is a banker who is wrongly sentenced to life in the Shawshank Prison for murdering his wife and her lover. He just so happens to have passed by the house of the other man with his gun and some evidences pointing to him not to mention that he has a very good motive for the murder. In prison, he is quiet and keeps to himself, and attracts the attention of a group of homosexuals called “The Sisters” who rape him many times. (At this point, I think about the many innocent people languishing in jail for the crimes they do not commit while the real criminals are out in the open without a conscience and without guilt that other people are paying for their evils. Such is the reality of the fucked up justice system and the equally fucked up investigative units.)

What is really admiring in Andy is that despite the many sufferings and hardships, he still is able to hold on to his humanity. He offers his financial services which alters his fate. Helping a guard captain named Byron Hadley gets him protected from the Sisters when, after Andy is almost killed, Bogs is beaten hard and is left crippled and transferred to another ward. The reward he wants for helping Hadley is for his prisonmates who work on the roofings to enjoy buckets of cold beer in summer, a brief but unforgettable feeling of freedom sweeping over the prisoners, as narrated by Red (Morgan Freeman).

Andy with Brook in the prison library which Andy helped to improve knowing that books and knowledge empowers.

Andy is then moved to the prison library where he initiate many changes including asking for funds relentlessly until the state finally accedes to his requests. There he works with Brook Hatlen who eventually is granted parole but realizing he cannot live in the world outside of prison as he “has been institutionalized” as Red would say it, he commits suicide. (I cried on the scene where he seems overwhelmed by how much things have changed as he crosses the street trying not to get hit by cars. Tears fell when he was mocked while working as a bagger in a supermarket. As Red says, inside the prison Brook felt important but in society at large, he is dispensable. Broke my heart big time.) Anyway, Andy’s transfer to the library is just a pretext as the hypocritical warden Samuel Norton wants to make a slave out of him to help him with his “projects” involving prison labor and bribery. It is then that Andy starts his move to launder money to an account of a fictitious man named Randall Stephens.

I cried in this part where Brooks feels trapped in the outside world after spending most of his life inside the prison

Almost twenty years has passed and there is a new inmate named Tommy Williams who eventually learns of Andy’s crime and shares that in one prison he has been to, there was a man who actually murdered Andy’s wife and the lover. Andy requests for another trial from Norton after learning this, with the assurance that Tommy whom he helped educate, will testify to his innocence. But Norton dismisses the request and orders Hadley to kill Tommy, covering the murder as justification for escape attempt. Andy’s patience of twenty years pays off when finally having the opportunity he escapes with Norton’s documents from prison and makes his way to Zihuatanejo, where he plans to spend the rest of his life. He gets the money under the name of Randall Stephens and sends the money laundering books to the newspaper. His revenge finally in motion a la Count of Monte Cristo. Hadley is arrested while Norton commits suicide before the police can get to him.

After many years, Red received parole and struggles to live outside of prison like Brook. In fact he comes to the place where Brook has been and also worked in the supermarket as bagger. Finally tired of it all, he leaves and looks for Andy by first going to the oak tree in Buxton where Andy proposed to his wife. Then he travels to Texas and finally reunites with his friend.

I just feel so relieved that this one ended well. This movie is a must-see to open the eyes of everyone of the struggles of convicts once they go out of prison. I really don’t care about the rich who get locked up, my main concern is for those who are wrongly convicted because the years spent in prison one can no longer get back. I remember Lav Diaz’s “Norte” movie which also has this theme, wherein the educated-turned-madman kills a lady but it is the poor worker who serves jailtime thus missing the time that should have been spent with his family.

Some important quotes I wouldn’t want to forget:

Andy: "The funny thing is, on the outside I was an honest man straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to become a crook." (Andy on realizing how he is being used by Norton for the latter’s illegal activities.)

Andy: "My wife used to say I'm hard man, you know, like a closed book. Complained about it all the time. She was beautiful. God, I loved her. I just didn't know how to show it, that's all. I killed her (...) I didn't pull the trigger, but I drove her away. That's why she died because of me, the way I am." (Andy recounts how guilty he is for his wife’s death even though he is not the one who killed her.)

Andy: "You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory." (Andy shares to Red where he wants to retire.)

Red: "Some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is much more drab and empty that they're gone." (on Andy’s escape from prison)

Red: "Terrible thing to live in fear (...) All I want is to be back where things make sense, where I won't be afraid all the time."

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A warm place with no memory… pretty much what I also desire for myself to forget the past three years full of sadness and unfortunate events. How many poets have wished for the same especially in moments of heartbreak?

给我一杯忘情水， 还我一夜不流泪… (Coz lately I have been missing him so much it hurts and I think of the few times he had been nice and sweet to me although I know that I shouldn’t. He is free to flirt with girls now. I should just stay away because my game is always about loyalty and respect with no room for flirting. We’re just too different in that respect.)