The Shawshank Redemption (1994), directed by Frank Darabont, is a film about Andy Dufresne, a lawyer sentenced to life in prison for supposedly murdering his wife. The main theme of the film is that Andy survives the brutality and corruption of prison through his enduring hope. The director expresses the theme in two scenes from the film. The first sympathises the audience with Andy. The second is about Andy escaping. The film particularly appeals to viewers going through personal hardships like divorce and loss by offering a compelling message of hope.
The first part starts with Andy and his fellow prisoners tarring a roof under the supervision of some guards. The director is trying to make the audience support Andy. He achieves this through visual and sound techniques that show Andy’s transition from powerless to powerful and also his kindness. To begin, a mid shot shows Captain Hadley complaining that the government will tax a lot of his recent inheritance. An over the shoulder shot shows the prisoners with their heads down tarring the roof, except Andy who turns to look back at Hadley.
Red, played by Morgan Freeman, warns him, “Andy, are you nuts? Andy leaves his mop and walks up to the guards catching them unawares and even accidentally insults Hadley by asking him if he can trust his wife. Up to this point, the director has established the contrast between the prisoners and guards. The low status prisoners have dirty, sweaty, grey overalls and heavy mops while the guards have high status indicated by their smart, black uniforms and arms casually cradling shotguns and batons. From the way the guards stand apart from the prisoners, the director seems to emphasise how the guards do not want to be associated with them as though they were lower class.
This is mirrored by the prisoners who do not dare look at the guards, except for Andy who Red calls nuts, hinting at the violence they expect to get in the rest of the film. After Andy insults Hadley he is almost thrown off the building. The camera comes forward in a point of view shot from Andy’s perspective, as he sees over the edge of the building. Andy quickly says, “Because if you do trust her[meaning Hadley’s wife], there’s no reason you can’t keep the 35,000. ” This cuts to a bird’s eye view shot of Hadley grabbing Andy before he falls. They are standing at the building’s edge.
The shot cranes down to their head level and circles them in a two shot. Andy offers to help Hadley with the legal paperwork in exchange ‘for three beers a piece for each of his co-workers’. We see a reaction shot of the other prisoner’s stunned faces. The director creates a cliffhanger, on the edge of your seat feeling, and then further heightens the distance to the ground and therefore a feeling of danger by using a point of view and a bird’s eye view shot to create depth in the image. Prisoners on the ground looking up at Andy indicate through their small size that Andy must be extremely high up.
We fear for Andy’s life. However, when the camera cranes down and frames Hadley and Andy in a two shot this places them on more equal footing. Then Hadley says, ‘Why should I trust a smart banker like you? ” This suggests Hadley is intimidated by Andy’s intelligence, he is paranoid about being manipulated. Then, Andy successfully negotiates beer for his services. This is a big indicator of how brave Andy is and this can be seen in the reaction shots of the prisoners. They pay him the biggest compliment by simply gaping and staring.
This next scene takes place on a hot, unpleasant day on a roof top. The director uses the sun as a harsh and hard key light to give the scene a feeling of hot unpleasantness with no signs of the prison seen on the roof. The main background element is the sky, a symbol of freedom. The director employs the technique of dialogue when he has Red say, “They felt like free men. ” The head guard even grabs a beer himself, dissolving the barriers between the guards and the criminals a little. Finally, we cut to a medium close up of Andy sitting away from the rest with a little smile on his face.
The director keeps touching back on the theme of corruption and brutality in prison but illustrates how Andy survives by trying to feel normal. Feeling normal allows him to keep his hope alive as he survives through the everyday struggle of prison. The overall effect of the sequence being that the audience is looking out for Andy as we have become emotionally connected to him. This second sequence builds upon the first by cashing in the audience’s emotional investment in Andy. We know he escapes since his cell is empty. However, we get to find out how he did it.
A tracking medium close up shot shows Andy crawling through a hand dug tunnel. This cuts to a medium close up of his head emerging from the end of the tunnel as he looks around with his flashlight. This is important because the tightly framed shot makes the audience wonder what obstacles, if any lie after the tunnel. This cuts to a low angle long shot of Andy shimmying down a drain pipe, the lightning outside acts as a blue backlight. This cuts back to a long shot of Andy reaching the ground where a sewage pipe runs along the floor. Now, the audience sees the obstacle that lies in his way.
However, he manages to break a hole in it and crawl half a mile through sludge to the end. This huge obstacle opposes his strong desire for escape, creating conflict and drama. Yet the obstacle only makes the audience cheer harder for Andy. A long shot shows Andy exiting the pipe into river. Finally, the last shot shows a top down view of Andy with his arms reaching for the sky as the lightning lights up the river. Here, the sky is a symbol of freedom that was shown before in the first sequence where the prisoners sat on the rooftop enjoying beer during the sunrise.
The lightning throughout the scene is similar to a light at the end of the tunnel cheering him on. It is perhaps a symbol of his hope. Andy’s freedom is due mostly to his undying hope. Otherwise, why else would he have dug a tunnel for twenty years using a rock hammer? Overall, through use of visual and sound techniques the director is able to form a strong emotional response from the audience. These two scenes strongly show Andy’s hope which allows him to survive and escape the brutal and corrupt prison environment. The second sequence, Andy’s daring escape is the final part of his enduring hope.
