Exactly 30 years ago today, Frank Darabont’s “The Shawshank Redemption” was released and underwhelmed at the box-office. Of all the films released in 1994, not many expected ‘Shawshank’ to become a classic.
The film opened on September 23, 1994. Test screening reactions and reviews were good enough, but against a budget of $25M, it made a measly $18M in its total run. Yet the film’s title is now as recognized as any golden age film classic, including “Citizen Kane” and “The Godfather.” This time, it’s not the critics speaking — ‘Shawshank’ did not place on the prestigious Sight & Sound poll — but rather audiences who have come to passionately embrace the film.
Decades after its release, its cultural influence looms large. ‘Shawshank’ is still the top-rated movie of all-time on IMDb (9.3/10) with close to 3 million votes to its name. Given the 30-year anniversary, there was inevitably going to be numerous think-pieces popping up online.
Scott Tobias’ The Guardian piece, titled “The Shawshank Redemption at 30: Is It Really the Greatest Film Ever Made?,” tackles the film’s lasting popularity, and answers that same question in the very first paragraph:
The Shawshank Redemption is not the greatest film ever made. Heck, it’s not even one of best films of 1994 – the year of Pulp Fiction, Hoop Dreams, Chungking Express, Exotica, Quiz Show and the last two entries in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy.
Meanwhile, The Independent’s Tom Fordy has his own writeup, titled “The Shawshank Redemption at 30: How one of 1994’s biggest flops became a cinematic classic.” Fordy, unlike Tobias, is more of the mind that the film deserves its stone-cold classic status:
Darabont crafts scenes that stand up to almost anything from Hollywood history, such as Andy playing “The Marriage of Figaro” to the stunned prison yard. For this writer, however, the real spirit of ‘Shawshank’ is captured in an earlier scene, when – during a day’s work tarring a roof – Andy smartly negotiates a case of cold beers for his fellow prisoners.
I don’t believe ‘Shawshank’ is the greatest film ever made, and anyways it’s all rather subjective to give any film that title. Yet it continues to sit at the top of IMDb’s top 250, currently besting “The Godfather,” all of this despite opening to a polite reception 30 years ago.
If anything, I’ve grown to believe that ‘Shawshank,’ with its beautifully structured storytelling, might be the one film that is most generally loved by the public. Ask a wide array of people, outside of our own film bubble, what their favorite film is, and ‘Shawshank’ will definitely get a few mentions. It’s not too old to isolate moviegoers who get turned off by black & white, but just old enough to be called a “classic.”
Forgetting the IMDb hyperbole, ‘Shawshank’ is indeed a great film, surely one of the best of 1994. It’s such a slick piece of put-together drama, a blissful work of old-school craftsmanship, from the writing to the directing, to the incredible acting.
Based on Stephen King’s novella, “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” the film tells the story of banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), who is sentenced to life in Shawshank State Penitentiary for the murders of his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. Over the following 20-some-odd years, he befriends numerous inmates, including contraband smuggler Ellis "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman).
What’s, I think, most remarkable about the film is its patience in telling this story. The key is the interactions and friendships that Andy makes at Shawshank more than the action. Whether he actually killed his wife — a question that does linger in the back of our heads — is not necessarily at the forefront of the drama. He was given two life sentences for the murder, but did he or didn’t he do it? He might as well be called an antihero since Darabont refuses to give answers.
If anything, ‘Shawshank’ is the story of men who have formed a community behind bars. This is their world. This is where they live now. There’s no getting out. The Morgan Freeman character, Red, is the spiritual core of the film, a man accused of murdering his wife by disabling her car brakes, who finds meaning and purpose inside the prison.
‘Shawshank’ is the definition of a film that was immensely aided by word-of-mouth, to the point of creating a movement — some moviegoers have called watching the film a “religious” experience. It’s turned into one of the most remarkable cinematic reappraisals, finding a mass audience on tapes and discs, and through TV screenings. Within five years, it turned into a phenomenon. In 1999, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about the “Shawshank” reappraisal, by that point, just five years after its release, it was already #1 on IMDb.
Most of all, the main theme of ‘Shawshank’ is one of the most universal and relatable ones imaginable: hope and patience in the face of adversity. It’s an allegory that seems to inspire the fiercest ‘Shawshank’ devotion. Once a piece of popular art has been declared, quite literally, life-changing, it tends to enter a place of cultish fervor, and maybe that’s what has made this film so everlasting.
Of course, we all know the rule: take these reactions with a grain of salt rather than treating them as gospel. Still, I will say that the film tested like gangbusters earlier this year, and Lionsgate clearly has confidence.