Shawshank Redemption February 12, 2013

The film Shawshank Redemption is a tale in which there is a God that stands aloof from events and watches men live and die with only the redemption they carve out of life for themselves.  The characters in the film have seemingly reached the end of their stories by the time the hero, Andy Dufresne, begins his.  They are in Shawshank Prison paying for their crimes without hope. Redemption is not an option for them.  Their chains have shackled their minds as well as their bodies.  Over time Andy establishes an unspoken rule for the convicts as he works hope gently under their bonds.  “You can either get busy living or you can get busy dying” or in other words; “You can either hurry up and die or you can do as much living as the rest of your life allows.”  That is the thought, or the theme that runs through the entire movie even in the music.  The song and main theme of the film begins with a melancholy tune then a solitary oboe begins a sweet melody leading the entire orchestra into a beautiful, slow, sweet piece of music.  Just as Andy alone refuses to let his mind be tied down, carving his redemption from the very walls of his prison.  In doing so he leads the convicts into a new perspective on life and helps make their lives worth living again.  

The diction is simple.  There is no flowery language or Shakespearean style inspirational speeches.  It is clear cut and without embellishment except for the eloquent and frequent cursing.   The simplicity gives it a power not usually seen.  There are no extra words, not even the foul ones.  The foulness of language shows how very much Andy does not belong there.  He is educated, refined, and not even guilty of the crime he is convicted of.  He is a Jesus Christ in Shawshank.  Preaching the hope of redemption in the midst of the most foul circumstances and being beaten for his trouble.  The diction mirrors the setting of the movie which is primarily the spectacle of Shawshank Prison itself.  It is concrete, ugly, miserable, and practically impenetrable. It gives off a hard and unforgiving atmosphere that seeps into the hearts of the guards, warden, and inmates alike. When Andy escapes Shawshank to the countryside it is portrayed to be the very essence of beauty and loveliness, “the Pacific that has no memory.”  Pure freedom. The redemption that Andy bought for himself at the cost of nearly twenty years of patient work.  

The plot of the story runs thus: Andy Dufresne a neglectful but hardworking husband discovers that his wife is having an affair with a hotshot golf pro.  He tries to drink his grief and anger away but ends up driving to the house of the man with a loaded gun in his car.  He decides not to murder his wife or her lover and leaves them together in bed but they are mysteriously murdered later that night.  Andy is blamed for the crime and given two life sentences in Shawshank Prison.  Once there he meets the narrator of the story “Red” who is “…a man who knows how to get things”, a smuggler of contraband items for the prisoners.  Andy asks him for a tiny rock hammer that he wants to use to create stone figurines. Andy is manically abused by the inmates and the guards supposedly in charge of keeping law and order.  The tables slowly start shifting when Andy begins using his gifts as an accountant to help the guards with financial difficulties and the warden with the prison book keeping. Using his banking skills Andy hides embezzled funds for the warden as well.  Soon he is managing the financial situations of the entire prison staff.   He is universally trusted.  His fellow inmates slowly begin to love him as well. He risks and often receives extreme punishment in the name of  “feeling normal” again and providing a window of hope to his friends.  He helps many of the prisoners get their GEDs including one young prisoner named Tommy Williams.  Tommy tells Andy that he met the man who killed his wife and her lover.  Andy, ecstatic, goes to the warden asking for a re-trial and is refused on the pretense that it is nothing but a false hope.  Andy, in desperation, promises never to reveal the pecuniary manipulation that he has done for the him.  Furious the warden has Andy put in solitary confinement and Tommy killed for his story.  The warden is a deeply corrupted man and is determined to keep Andy for his lucrative money manipulating abilities.  He has made him rich man.  Andy begins to show signs of mental wear and his friends in the prison are afraid he will take his own life.  Has the mind of Dufresne finally succumbed to the grey walls of Shawshank? It is the defeat they fear most.  The light the prison had grown to love was leaving them. When Dufresne does not show up for roll call one morning his friends believed the worst had happened.  Much to the surprise of characters and audience alike Dufresne has escaped.   The story rewinds close to 20 years.  Andy scratches the surface of his wall with his hammer and finds it soft.  From then on he begins to create his own redemption.  Forged out of blood, sweat, and tears. He required no one else.  God would not help him so he helped himself, hiding his own rock hammer in a bible.  Finally he crawls through a sewer to finally claim his freedom.  Crawls through 500 yards of hell  to reach his vindication. He found salvation in God’s word but it was his own.  He leaves the country and builds his dream life in Mexico on the Pacific ocean and when his friend, is released, 

Shawshank Redemption is a story of death, Hell and resurrection.  Andy’s story is very like that of Christ.  Andy enters Shawshank for a crime he did not commit.  It is a foreign world to him in which his only purpose is to show the way unto salvation mentally and physically.  Christ entered our world for the sole purpose of rescuing the damned souls therein and was killed for crimes he did not commit. Andy “died” in the sewer and “rose from the dead” as he came out again.  He left to another land and drew Red to make his own redemptive story and follow him.  Christ rose from the dead and left this world for another land calling those he loved to follow after him in the redemption that he purchased them.  Besides the parallel to Christ’s redemption Andy also represents the journey of every man unto salvation.  Each person is held captive by sin.  Sometimes for nothing but the initial sin inherited by Adam.  A sin that they were not personally guilty of, like Andy.  Each man decides within themselves whether they will get busy living or get busy dying.  If they decide to get busy and live they begin working their way through solid rock scratch by scratch, defying the impossible, fighting to win their freedom.  This world seeks above all things to capture the minds of its inhabitants and bend them to its will.  Choosing to get busy living means applying hope to hopeless situations and rebelling against depression with action towards a higher ideal or higher reality, exactly as Andy did.  

Shawshank Redemption is a film portraying a man who is set up as Christ.  The movie takes the greatest story of all time and instead of God extending his saving grace to man, man redeems himself through his own good ideas and his own strength.  God is just a menacing absent being and man must forge his own redemption or die. God will not help.  The story is beautiful, the acting is unparalleled, the diction is succinct and powerful, the setting is imposing and very appropriate but the message is a lie.  There is nothing so attractive to someone than the idea that they are their own salvation, that no one can save them but themselves.  The movie pushes the worldview that men are their own Jesus Christ and that our salvation lies only in what they do to redeem themselves.  Jesus was, is, and always will be the only way to freedom.  There is no way that we can earn our salvation through good works or how right people feel they are.  Mankind is a sinful race in need of a mediator between them and the wrath of a holy God.  If they believe that trying to be a good person will get them sanctification from sin or if their good idea is going to spring them from the prison of wickedness they are wrong.  With the holiness of God 70% is not a passing grade and 90% is not an A.  Unless 100% of sin is covered there is no hope.  No man can meet those requirements unless he is covered entirely by the blood of Christ.  Shawshank Redemption is a wonderful movie and a work of art but the overall worldview is foolish and without merit.  

The Princess Bride

This is a kissing movie.  Princess Bride is a classic tale of daring adventure, intrigue, treachery, feats of valor and of course, true love.  True love is something that every person dreams of sometime in their life, however, no one can quite agree on a solid definition. The skeptics simply say that it does not exist, the fairy stories and fiction fantasies promise that there is a world of rainbows and cotton candy with the perfect “other” for everyone no matter who they are.  Other books tend to begrudgingly accept true love’s existence for the sake of their readers’ weaker sentiments, films just complicate everything by indoctrinating their audiences into the cult of “follow your heart.”  Truly, is love a feeling, an action, a legend, a lie, or a very present reality? The Princess Bride is a movie adapted from a fairy story that has become a family favorite and an all around cult-classic because of the simplistic, endearing and slightly ridiculous characters, the ever popular “handsome-rogue-rescues-princess” theme and of course because of the pure truth of what love is lies hidden among the hilarity and tackiness.

In the story the characters are pencil sketches of real life.  They are living in a black and white world where men are either cowardly or brave, good guys or bad guys, and right and wrong are ever confused.  They live in a perfect world. The thought, the very fabric of this movie, is that any good person who lives in the perfect fantasy world will see their lives work out in the end no matter what, the bad guys always get what they deserve and the hero always gets the girl.  The author himself can kill his heroes and create impossible barricades of hopelessness as high as “The Cliffs of Insanity” but that will not be enough to stop the characters’ love from reaching its ultimatum because this is a fairy tale where everything works out just as it should.  The diction of the actors in the movie is flowery and as old as story telling.  It feels familiar, like it has been written in a dream from long ago.    Each heart at some point in its song of beating longs for such sweet words be whispered to it as those given to the heroine by the hero, “Death cannot stop true love.” and “I will always come for you.” He whispers the same vows of eternal faithfulness, honor and goodness that haunt the skeleton every heroic story that we cherish.  Humans share an avid desire to be loved truly and in spite of themselves and their short comings.

The song of the movie, or the sound track, is simple.  There are a handful of themes and gaps of silence that bow out gracefully to the character’s dialogue.  Nothing legendary, just enough music to compliment the acting and keep silence from injuring the story.  The spectacle of the film is a strange mix of realistic backdrops and fantastical ones.  Everything is realistic enough to not cause visual alarm that brings in disinterest along with disbelief, yet it is all fantastical enough to not allow the scenery to be easily placed as belonging in this world.  The Princess Bride is a beautiful story that has unfortunately been spread a little too thin over the imaginations of the viewers to be called a masterpiece but it conveys the simplicity of loving without reservation.  Love is is timeless and that is what makes the Princess Bride a classic.

The plot and characters of the Princess Bride are enjoyable if without depth; the perfect fairy tale. Wesley or the Man in Black, is the loyal lover of Buttercup, the commoner princess.  It is a stereotypical platform for a story worthy of remberance.  These two characters are supplemented by Indigo Montoya, a spaniard with an over developed sense of honorable vengeance, Vizzini, a midget with an ego twenty times his size whose art is that of starting wars, and Fezzik, a giant who has a heart as large as he is.  The comic Vizzini and his two wannabe henchmen are contrasted by three slimy villains who’s hearts are as black and cold as their lies, Prince Humperdink, Count Rugen, and their own would-be henchman, a creepy albino servant. These three kill Wesley but are even then defeated by the efforts of Miracle Max and his witch of a wife.  The plot itself runs as someone would expect it to.  A young man falls in love with a beautiful woman who treats him like a worthless varlet then after persistent sweetness the young woman falls in love with him.  The young man, who is of course Wesley,  goes off to seek his fortunes.  Five years later Buttercup looses hope and is made to be engaged to the prince of the land, Prince Humperdink.  The last thing that Wesley says to his lady is: “Hear this now, I will always come for you.” Buttercup replies tearfully, “How can you be sure?” Wesley consoles her gently: “This is true love, you think this happens every day?” This definition of love is intriguing because it puts it forth as a rarity.

Love by Wesley’s reckoning is enduring faithfulness no matter what the cost.  He mentions nothing about enduring affection, nothing about following his heart, Wesley promises to always come for Buttercup.  For him it is always as simple as that.  He has promised to never to abandon her to any evil thing even her own devises and he keeps his promise.  This is really and truly what love is.  Throughout the story Wesley holds true to his word and treasures it in his heart and never lets go of it, thus, proving his love to be true to Buttercup.  Princess Buttercup is a very empty character.  She does nothing and always requires saving yet Wesley loves her with all his heart and soul.  He loves her enough to stay alive through almost every hardship and even comes back from the grave for his love when killed by Prince Humperdink, Count Rugen and their albino.

Wesley is not written in with a discernible flaw.  This is vitally important because Wesley’s role in the story is to be a picture of love itself in his dealings with Buttercup.  The princess does not deserve him yet he promises to always come for her and keeps his nearly impossible vow.  That is love.  Undeserved sacrifice.  Such an element is that which is desired by all people and in creating a film that enshrines that theme it gives power to its flat characters.  The advantage of a story with all an all one dimensional cast is the young may enjoy and understand as may the old, the in between, the hurting, those looking for a laugh, those without any expectations at all and those looking for truth.  There is no secret message it is a story being told for everyone simply for the love of stories.  But the very nature of stories is to convey truth or the lack of it.  In the Princess Bride the entire drama echoes of another, older, more passionate story.  That of Christ and His church. The undying and undeserved love of Jesus for His church is found slowly seeping through the crack of the rough frames of the movie.

The Princess Bride is a great story and like all great stories Jesus Christ’s fingerprints are visible in the clay.  The hero, Wesley, is a mirrored shadow of Christ, a distant parallel, but still a parallel. Both were perfect men who loved deeply unto death.  Both were abandoned by their first love for another, Wesley for Prince Humperdink and Christ for false gods.  Both redeemed their loves by their death.  Both were considered “rogue agents” by the corrupted law of the land.  Both win in the end and bring fulfillment to the people around them.  Both redefined the common understanding of love.  When asked what the greatest commandment was Jesus replied “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.  And the second is like it.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”    The greatest commandment laid down by God himself is to love.  Jesus laid down his life, purchased righteousness and eternal peace for those he loved and came back from the grave.  Wesley laid down his life as the reward for coming after Buttercup and then came back to life through the endeavors of Miracle Max and purchased peace for himself, Buttercup, and those around him.  In tales and in real life the act of loving truly is absolutely difficult and often requires life sacrifice and a great deal of unpleasantness.

In the Princess Bride sentiment and wishful thinking prevail and the villain Count Rugen dies and the slimy prince is robbed of his bride and his dignity as the true lovers ride away into the sunset and kiss each other tenderly with a pure and beautiful kiss that “…leaves them all behind.” Thus ends the adventure in a way that leaves the expectant audience satisfied and grinning.  With all the tawdriness there lies a story of  what love really is underneath the gaudy exterior. Wesley leaves in the minds of the viewers Christ’s definition of true love.  The act of loving is an act of bleeding, an act of undeserved sacrifice. Wesley and Jesus teach that the reward of loving is not in the act itself but in glorifying the object loved.