Scott D: Lileks summed up seventies movies so well one time:

"I've said it before; might as well say it again. Movies like this paved the way for Star Wars, inasmuch as SW let the good guys not only win, but live, AND get a medal from the dame at the end. (Except for Chewie. That still rankles.) If the style of early 70s sci-fi had infected Star Wars, all the Rebels would have been crushed, Tatooine would have been blown up by the Death Star, and the soundtrack would have played 'One Tin Soldier' as the Death Star retreated into the infinite blackness of space. War, man! It's so . . . futile."

One Tin Soldier. Oh my.

But the need for happy endings can get just as tiresome as the overuse of tragic ones. I've been bugged for the past two days by a really dumb post on the right-wing film blog.

What? You didn't know there's a right-wing film blog? Well, there is.

Anyway, the post develops into the usual mind-reading paranoia about "liberal Hollywood", and finally writes off the grit and corruption of The French Connection by saying that it "belongs with Jimmy Carter’s infamous 'malaise speech' on the dust-heap of history", which you'll agree is a silly thing to say. They want Reagansque buoyancy or nothing, I suppose. God help us.

So what's the ethics of dwelling on darkness and misery and failure and so forth? Is the viewer, as the right-wing guys implicitly claim, sanctioning it - and by that sanction giving up ever trying to correct it? Kubrick said no. He held the view that only when we acknowledge the dark side of human nature will we be able to do anything to correct it. But many filmmakers who've followed in his wake seem to regard dwelling in darkness as an end in itself, a sort of anti-Norman-Rockwell iconoclasm. Hence, One Tin Soldier. But is this whole notion of film-as-moral-corrective a useful one?

It seems to me a film should presume to show us what is important, whether good or bad or happy or sad. But it's a question to which I haven't yet developed a neat answer.

Posted by: Brian on February 18, 2005 4:30 PM

M. Blowhard - I would have thought a media-flunkie/junkie such as yourself would have had an eye on cable rating and VHS/DVD sales and rentals.

One aspect of the film that's a little different is that this is a standard action-guy film set in the rough and gritty world of prison - yet while brutality and murder and dropping the soap are present, the story is about friends. Basically, it's Stand by Me about grown-ups whose lives have gone horribly wrong. Our hero was a victim, our narrator made a tragic mistake, both have the same happy ending. Very neat.

Posted by: jc on February 19, 2005 3:38 PM

I don't quite understand why the movie is so popular either. It's a good movie, but not great. My guess is there's some sort of value-promotion going on, on some level, and a lot of people who just like the movie a lot and have never seen anything better. With regard to values, I am kind of stumped. Maybe a nostalgia for that time period? (But most of the people who fetishize the movie never lived then...)

Posted by: . on February 20, 2005 10:08 PM

I'm 30, so fall pretty neatly, I think, into the late Gen-X bucket you describe. For me, the attraction was all about Stephen King; as a major fan I had read the source story ("Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption") several times, and was just stunned by how accurately Darabont was able to capture King's tone and voice in the story.

That said, Freeman's performance, and narration, does do wonders. But a lot of the film's appeal may have to do with it coming by it's admittedly long-shot dream ending honestly. That is, I'm not sure that on a first viewing it's evident that such a happy end is in store. And that end IS hard-won.

One of the things I simply adore about Thomas Newman's oft-imitated score is how he approaches the triumphal escape scene. While the music swells and triumphs appropriately as Andy escapes it almost immediately stills to a bit of true melancholy. It's a subtle reminder, timed to precisley the moment of triumph, of how much Andy has lost before getting to that point. Not just the sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, but the sheer time lost. Andy doesn't escape after doing a year to resume his life, he escapes after (if memory serves) 20+ years, the prime of his life taken away completely. The bitter nature of the triumph is even more poignant for Red; he's been in Shawshank for the vast majority of his adult life before he's paroled at what we're to assume is well into his 60s. And, to me, that's what moves the film from just a well-told, well-acted gripping yarn into the realm of great movie--that it acknowledges that hope is a powerful thing NOT simply because of the triumph that can be reached, but in and of itself. The film implies, even if it doesn't, in the end, go there, that even if Andy had died in Shawshank at the ripe old age of 80 he would have still, in some way, triumphed over reality, because he had hope. And that's a powerful notion.

Posted by: John on February 21, 2005 3:23 PM

All I can add to the "I don't quite get it either" viewpoint about Shawshank is that it gets shown a lot on television. Repeat viewing begets repeat viewing?

The hero fools his jerk boss? Maybe a little guilt conscience about capital punishment?

Posted by: Rob Asumendi on February 21, 2005 8:56 PM






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