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Personal Response on Shawshank Redemption

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Personal Response on Shawshank Redemption
Personal Response to “The Shawshank Redemption”

Punit Gor
Foundation II
DSK Supinfocom

Director Frank Darabont’s 1994 debut, The Shawshank Redemption is a Drama film adapted from Stephen King’s novel Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption from his 1982 collections. Thomas Newman delivers the score to the film.

The story is chronological and is in the same time period of the film (1994). The film stars Tim Robbins, who plays a young and successful banker, Andrew “Andy” Dufresne, sentenced to life term at Shawshank State Prison in Maine, for murdering his wife and her lover. Morgan Freeman, who plays the Character Ellis “Red” Redding, a prisoner in the same jail, narrates Andy’s story to the audience. The film also stars Bob Gunton who plays the warden of the prison.

The Film begins with a flash back, where the protagonist sitting in a car at night, drunk, with a pistol in his hand, listening to a painful romantic song on the radio. Parallel to this flash back, runs the trial, which is an introduction to the film. Andy is accused of two murders, his wife and her lover, the night his wife leaves him after a fight. Here its not clear whether he actually committed the crime or not, as he was drunk and confused. The truth is never shown to the audience, but the editing makes the audience, want to believe Andy, when he is claiming himself to be innocent. In the edit, while he is being sentenced to life term, his wife and her lover are showing making love, in flash back. The judge mentions him to be cold blooded and Andy is very hurt and shocked here, acted well by Tim. This works very well for audience to feel sympathy for Andy.

Then introduced is ‘Red’, a prisoner who has spent many years in prison, only master in smuggling anything, within reason, to the jail. Here also starts his narration of how his views were about Andy from the first day to jail and time to time. From this point it is very clear that Andy is the character of interest for the

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