Line #45 YMMV/TheShawshankRedemption


1	* AdaptationDisplacement: This film is far more well-known than the Creator/StephenKing novella it's based on.
2	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
3	** Is Andy Dufresne really innocent of committing the murders of his wife and her lover or did he really kill them and just repress the memories of doing it due to his drunkenness?
4	*** With this in mind, is Elmo Blatch truly the culprit who got Andy incarcerated for a crime he didn't commit or is he just a delusional lunatic? And did he really confess, or was Tommy making that up?
5	** During his brief stay in prison before his death at Captain Hadley's hands, Fat-Ass claims to not belong in prison and wants to be back with his mother. Does Fat-Ass say that because he regretted whatever crime he committed to be incarcerated for, or like in Andy's case, he was set up and framed for something he really didn't do?[[note]]Or perhaps his protestations indicate that he was sent to the wrong prison-if he was in for fraud or embezzlement or some other financial crime, he'd go to a minimum-security institution and not a place like Shawshank.[[/note]]
6	** Was Brooks really the sweet old man he came across as? We only get to see him old and mellowed out, but... you don't get sent upriver for half a century for shoplifting, and he had definitely managed to play the system to his advantage and land with the cushiest job in there.
7	* AudienceAlienatingPremise: [[VindicatedByHistory These days]] it's considered one of the greatest films ever made, but its original box office reception was lukewarm due to this; it's based on one of Creator/StephenKing's least famous stories and it's a gritty, realistic prison drama from a creator who's more known for fantasy and horror stories. It didn't appeal to the horror fans that generally enjoyed King's works, but its obscurity kept it from appealing to the overall mainstream.
8	* AwardSnub: One of the most notable examples. It was nominated for seven UsefulNotes/{{Academy Award}}s, but ended up completely empty-handed, this being the year that ''Film/ForrestGump'' was released.
9	** Not only this, but Creator/TimRobbins failed to receive a Best Actor nomination, and Frank Darabont was omitted from the Best Director line-up.
10	** It was a great year for supporting actors, but Creator/BobGunton was noticeably snubbed for his role as Warden Norton, as was James Whitmore for his role as Brooks.
11	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The score is written by Music/ThomasNewman. Beautiful music is a given. Also, the song (Taken from ''Theatre/TheMarriageOfFigaro'') that Andy plays to the entire prison while inside the warden's office.
12	* CantUnHearIt: Did you watch the movie before reading the novella? Well, good luck not hearing the whole thing as Creator/MorganFreeman in your head.
13	* CatharsisFactor:
14	** [[spoiler: Seeing Andy escape from prison, play the Warden like a chump, and [[EarnYourHappyEnding happily reunite with Red]] is one of the most satisfyingly hard-earned and well-deserved endings in film history.]]
15	** Also, seeing [[SerialRapist Bogs]] get [[NoHoldsBarredBeatDown beaten senseless to the point of immobilization]] is tremendously satisfying to see.
16	** Although the audience is denied the satisfaction of seeing it for themselves, nobody will feel sorry to hear about Byron Hadley crying like a little girl when he ends up in a cell.
17	* CompleteMonster:
18	** [[WardensAreEvil Warden Samuel Norton]] seems like a stern but [[FauxAffablyEvil affable]] prison bureaucrat before he reveals the true extent of his immorality and corruption. Norton runs [[HellholePrison Shawshank]] as a place of horrible, soul-crushing conditions overshadowed by [[HidingBehindReligion cheap Christian rhetoric]], where a man is beaten to death on Andy's first day by Norton's corrupt guards and violent rape is allowed to occur within the system. Norton sets up cheap prison labor to blackmail desperate private contractors, using Andy's financial knowledge to launder the illegal money, and when a new inmate named Tommy has proof of Andy's innocence, Norton has him shot in the yard by [[TheDragon Captain Byron T. Hadley]] and has the murder passed off as an escape attempt. Norton finally throws all rhetoric aside, intending to keep Andy under his crushing thumb forever; Norton throws Andy in solitary confinement for a month, threatens to destroy everything Andy's built to improve Shawshank over the past 20 years in prison and make sure that he'll be handed over to the rapists again, before giving Andy another month in isolation just to think about it.
19	** [[SerialRapist Bogs Diamond]] is the leader of a prison gang called "The Sisters", who prey on weaker inmates to [[PrisonRape rape them again and again]] for as long as they like. Bogs sets his sights on Andy and together with his gang makes repeated attempts to rape and brutalize Andy over the course of several years, succeeding about half the time. When Andy tries to fight off the latest attempt, Bogs threatens to shiv Andy through the skull if he doesn't give him and his buddy oral sex. When Andy talks him out of it by playing on his ignorance, he beats Andy straight into the infirmary for a month instead.
20	%%
21	%% Bring CompleteMonster examples to this thread before adding any: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=6vic3f9h1cy5qivsenw8llok&page=1. Check the FAQ first to see what would qualify characters for the trope, and if there has been previous discussion on the work.
22	%%
23	* FandomRivalry: With, of all things, ''Film/TheGodfather''. The two have been competing for the #1 spot on the Website/{{IMDb}} Top 250 for years, though ''Shawshank'' is more frequently on the top spot. One of ''The Godfather''[='s=] reigns at #1 was ended when fans of ''Film/TheDarkKnight'' tried to game the system and make their film #1, but only succeeded in putting ''Shawshank'' back at #1. Fans of ''The Godfather'' were not happy, but took their frustration out on ''Shawshank'' fans on [=IMDb=] forums.
24	* GeniusBonus: The record Andy plays is Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart's ''Theatre/TheMarriageOfFigaro'', and specifically the duetino ''Sull'aria'', in which Susanna and the Contessa make their plan to dupe the Count, which is quite a bit of {{Foreshadowing}}.
25	* HarsherInHindsight:
26	** Andy is put on trial for the murder of his wife and lover. It was already serious, but it got a lot harder to watch after the OJ Simpson murder trial.
27	** In 2015, when inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dC0UXSOxTs their escape was compared to Andy's in this movie]].
28	** In 2018 Morgan Freeman was hit with eight accusations of sexual harassment, though in stark contrast to the majority of other people swept up in the Me Too movement, he gave a contrite statement about regretting any pain he caused, unnervingly reminiscent of Red being the "only guilty man in Shawshank."
29	* HilariousInHindsight:
30	** Hadley is played by Creator/ClancyBrown, who's best known to WesternAnimation aficionados as ComicBook/LexLuthor in various Franchise/DCAnimatedUniverse productions. As of 2011, Creator/MarkRolston, who played Bogs, is now [[WesternAnimation/YoungJustice2010 Lex Luthor]] in a different universe. That's right - this movie features Lex Luthor beating up Lex Luthor.
31	*** Mark Rolston also voices Norman Osborn in the [[VideoGame/SpiderManPS4 PS4 Spider-Man game]], meaning you now have [[ComicBook/{{Superman}} one superhero's]] arch-enemy beating up [[ComicBook/SpiderMan another superhero's]] arch-enemy.
32	** Captain Hadley had to get some sound financial advice from Andy Dufresne in order to keep a cash windfall intact, the kind of advice that [[WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants Mr. Krabs]] would know in his sleep. Krabs certainly wouldn't trust a ''banker'' with his money. More hilariously, Hadley first doubts Andy's advice on account he was "that smart banker who killed his wife."
33	** Believe it or not, this wouldn't be the last time that Morgan Freeman [[Film/{{Dreamcatcher}} played a character in a Stephen King adaptation who was originally Irish]].
34	** Heywood singing along to Music/HankWilliams' "Lovesick Blues" 23 years before the Walmart Yodeling Boy.
35	* HoYay: Andy and Red.
36	* HypeBacklash: An interesting case, where some would argue that ''Shawshank'' went from being one of the more underrated films of its time to potentially being one of the more overrated within a decade. Holding the #1 position of "Greatest Film of All Time" on IMDB is the kind of thing that would put any movie under intense scrutiny.
37	* ItWasHisSled: [[spoiler:Andy escapes from Shawshank prison using a plan he'd been preparing for nearly his entire sentence. He escapes by digging a hole behind a series of large posters he had with a rock hammer, smashing open a sewage pipe, climbing through "the length of five football fields" of shit, and spilling out into a muddy river in the middle of a storm]], leading to his iconic RedemptionInTheRain moment. The details [[spoiler: of Andy's escape]] have been parodied and homaged several times, and the RedemptionInTheRain moment is used in promotional materials, which even without context is not hard to guess the nature of.
38	* JerkassWoobie: Brooks and Heywood.
39	** Brooks definitely deserved to be in prison (the book details the why) but he became institutionalised after spending so much time there to the point where he had a FreakOut when his parole was granted. He had very good reason to be concerned -- he was a FishOutOfWater in the real world as an elderly ex-con with an ailing body whose limited intelligence couldn't help him.
40	** Heywood was the one who indirectly got Fat Ass killed and bit Andy's head off the next morning at being asked the guy's name. On the other hand, he just wanted to win a bet, never wanted the guy to actually lose his life and was devastated that Fat Ass died in infirmary, and is pretty genial in general. He's also fairly dim.
41	* MemeticMutation: The scene where Andy plays opera music for the prison has been edited many times on Website/YouTube. Said opera music has been replaced by various kinds of music, from pop music to heavy metal, and even by flea market ads. To be fair, the reactions of the prisoners and the warden made it pretty ripe for parody.
42	** "Get busy living, or get busy dying."
43	* MoralEventHorizon:
44	** [[spoiler:The Warden ordering the death of a recently transferred con (Tommy) who has evidence of Andy's innocence, so that Andy will be forced to continue assisting him in his money laundering scheme.]]
45	** Also, [[spoiler:Hadley]] crossed this when he threatened to [[spoiler:throw Andy off the roof and pretend Andy fell off.]] Beating up the emotionally-overwhelmed inmate earlier on could be excused by claiming he did it to deter other prisoners from making noise, but his later threat has no excuse.
46	** Bogs Diamond and The Sisters raping and brutalizing Andy over the period of '''''two years.'''''
47	* NauseaFuel: Three words: '''[[spoiler:Sewage pipe escape.]]''' It's a rare example that's also oddly triumphant, considering that its sheer grossness makes what [[RedemptionInTheRain happens afterwards]] even more awesome as a result.
48	-->'''Red:''' Andy [[spoiler:crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness]] I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want to.
49	* OneSceneWonder:
50	** Elmo Blatch, [[spoiler: the man who ''really'' killed Andy's wife]], has less than a ''minute'' of screen time but makes every last second of it count.
51	** The frightened new prisoner known only as Fat Ass.
52	* RetroactiveRecognition: Younger viewers watching the film for the first time may recognize Thomas Newman's score for the escape scene from when he reused it for another escape scene in ''WesternAnimation/FindingNemo''.
53	* StoicWoobie: Andy of course, given what he goes through, and [[spoiler:the point that he did not commit the double-murder he is in jail for.]]
54	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: There are a couple of parts from the book which, while not vital to the story (and which would have been distracting if given too much focus)), could have added a little more color to the prison atmosphere.
55	** A reporter going undercover as a prisoner and exposing Norton's predecessor, which could have given a nice HeroOfAnotherStory anecdote, and perhaps the novel subplot that the corruption remains at Shawshank even as the wardens change.
56	** Red's discussion of some of the colorful past escapes from the prison and how it tended to be the spontaneous ones (three people walking away during a work detail when a guard got distracted and a yard workier managing to slip out with the guards during a shift change) that succeeded over complex ones like a hang glider built in the basement or a dozen men smashing through a wall with tools stolen from a construction project).
57	* ToughActToFollow: Frank Darabont has yet to make another film as beloved as this and may never do it.
58	** There's not even been a Stephen King movie as beloved since. And arguably, any movie, so beloved is this.
59	* ValuesResonance:
60	** It was a brief moment, but upon Red telling Andy about Bogs, the Sisters and their ways, Andy asks if it would help for him to explain to the vicious inmates that he was not a homosexual, to which Red replied "Neither are they; you have to be human first. They don't qualify." Even if it was to display how depraved they are, Red's comment was enlightening to hear in 1994 and rather rare to hear in the time frame the scene was set in, the 1940s. It's also notable for its clear-eyed understanding of the Sisters' crimes, and thoroughly averts the usual [[DoubleStandardRapeMaleOnMale Hollywood depiction of male rape]] by showing that nothing about their crimes is remotely funny, nor is Andy depicted as any less of a man for not being able to fight them off. It's one of the best and most tasteful handlings of the subject on film as a result, even to this day.
61	** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhGJ5SmSE2o&t=688s As this video]] by ''Pop Culture Detective'' shows, the film was disregarded in its own time due to the message of humanizing prisoners not being welcome in the "tough-on-crime" environment of the early 1990s. But as the awareness of the failures of the prison system has become more apparent, the movie's message has become more and more relevant.
62	* VindicatedByHistory: Though the movie was warmly received by critics in 1994, it had ''a lot of competition that year''. As a result, it failed to win any of the Oscars that it was nominated for (see AwardSnub above), and barely managed to make back its budget at the box-office (even worse, word of mouth was spreading, and it was starting to do better business just as it was yanked from theaters). It has since come to be regarded as one of the finest films of the 1990s, and it has consistently been one of the highest user-rated movie on Website/IMDb for nearly a decade. As of this writing, it holds the #1 spot, though it was second to ''Film/TheGodfather'' for much of that time (see FandomRivalry above).
63	* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic:
64	** The warden keeps his safe [[spoiler: and all the damning evidence therein]] under a needlepoint that reads "His judgment cometh and that Right Soon..."
65	** Andy keeps [[spoiler: the rock hammer that facilitates his escape hidden in the Bible, in the book of Exodus]].
66	** The Warden's favorite verse from the Bible is Jesus' line in John 8:12, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." It seems the warden thinks of himself in this manner, but the line better fits Andy, an innocent man sentenced to be punished for a crime he did not commit and helps bring light and hope to the prison.
67	* TheWoobie:
68	** Tommy. Poor kid works his ass off to make something of himself and is more than eager to help Andy. [[spoiler:Then he gets murdered by Hadley.]]
69	** The other prisoners (the ones who ''aren't'' completely horrible people, which is most of them) tread the line between this and JerkassWoobie. Including [[{{Deuteragonist}} Red]].
70	** Fat Ass gets sent to prison and beaten to death on his very first night. Why? [[DisproportionateRetribution Because his crying was annoying Hadley.]]

Context YMMV / TheShawshankRedemption