The Shawshank Redemption

It was a good evening last night as about 40 of us gathered for the first meeting of Film Club Extra, to watch The Shawshank Redemption and then chat it over. Here is the text of Methodist Minister David Bagwell's excellent closing thoughts. Chat further in The Old Barn, Wraxall on Friday 26th October 8pm for an hour if you want.

Shawshank Redemption

Final Thoughts

Forrest Gump with Tom Hanks was the film that pipped The Shawshank Redemption for the Best Film Oscar back in 1994, and in some ways it had a similar theme as one man overcame adversity but Shawshank is a film about hope itself – the hope that sustains us through difficult times, or when it is lacking steadily destroys us even if things around us don’t seem that bad.

Andy had that hope, they couldn’t take it from him, they being the prison system. And more than that he was able to give that hope to others, notably Red and Tommy. Brooks on the other hand sadly did not have that hope, and even when free, especially when free, wasn’t able to live with hope.

This is also a film about grace or unconditional giving - think back on some of the many moments of grace in this story. Andy’s six year writing project for the library, his support for Tommy and the sending in of his tossed away test paper, his gift of the harmonica to Red. These acts of kindness to others then prompted a response as Red and others gathered special rocks for Andy to carve when he got out of solitary and as they get him that Rita Hayworth poster that turned out to be so crucial in his ultimate escape. Even the guard is infected by this grace as he passes on the news to Andy that Tommy has passed - saying simply, 'Thought you’d like to know', something he’d never have thought of doing at the start of the film.

Such grace doesn’t come cheap of course, as we see from the punishment Andy takes for playing the Mozart aria, and at its best such grace is totally selfless. Remember Andy’s deal with the captain for helping him with his tax. Three beers apiece for his fellow prisoners, and that from someone who tells us he is now a nondrinker.

When the guards inspect his cell with the governor present. Andy just happens to be reading his Bible. It’s Mark 13:35 which says, 'Keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the House will come back, whether in the evening or at midnight or when the cock crows or at dawn', a verse put in perhaps to remind us that this is also a film about the ultimate hope that good will one day triumph over evil and that those who have done wrong will be fully and fairly judged.

But the main message of this film is focused not on some future righting of wrong, but on a hope that is to be sustained right now to enable us to experience real freedom in this present moment, the kind of freedom illustrated when Andy emerges from the sewer and in the rain and lightning reaches up to the sky to celebrate a new beginning.

The hope that has sustained him inside his prison is a memory of the beauty that might yet be. Instead of lamenting on the many injustices done to him both inside and outside of prison, as would be natural, he focuses on what cannot be seen and waits for it with patience and faith. Of course he does more than just wait - he actively perseveres. Paul, one of the early leaders of the Christian church spent a great deal of his life in prison, and he wrote in Romans 5:2 that with hope alive in us suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character and character yet more hope, and hope in Jesus does not ultimately disappoint.

For Andy, as for many before and since, it was music that played a key part in prompting that memory of this other reality and sustaining that hope. For him it was the music of Mozart that gave him a taste of that freedom that he cannot yet see, and allowed him to stay connected to that real world of beauty and love when everything around him seemed so cold and grey. And that is what music still does today whether it be sung or listened to in a church setting or played at full blast on a car stereo. It lifts us and touches us and connects us with that which is beyond what we can currently see and touch.

After his two weeks in solitary he comes out and tells Red that it was the easiest two weeks he ever did because he had Mr. Mozart for company. When Red thinks that he had a tape recorder smuggled into the cell, Andy taps his heart and his head and says that the music was inside him where they could not confiscate it. Red goes on to say that he used to play the harmonica but gave it up when he came in prison because it didn’t make sense any more. 'Here’s where it makes the most sense', Andy replies. 'We need it so we don’t’ forget'. 'Forget what,' says Red, 'That there are things in this world not carved out of grey stone, that there’s a small place inside of each of us that they can never lock away and that place is called hope.'

Few of us will wind up in prison, like Andy but we will probably find ourselves from time to time in situations that seem to imprison us – a dead end job we long to move on from, a lingering illness that seems to hang on for ever, a move to a hostile and strange place where we despair of ever finding a real friend. It is at such times that we desperately need the hope that we have seen, and talked of, tonight. Proverbs 13:12 says, 'Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life' and at the start of Hebrews 13 we read that it is faith that sustains such hope for 'to have faith is to be sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.'

Having listened to that Mozart aria Red comments – 'I have no idea to this day what them two Italian ladies were singing about, Truth is I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it….It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments – every last man at Shawshank felt free.'

Good night and God bless.

David Bagwell 12.10.07

Remember, the first rule of Film Club is that you do talk about Film Club - Steve Tilley