Shawshank Redemption
Resignation
and Freedom
What could be seen as the worst of the denials
of life, imprisonment is the punishment applied by the power of the State to
those who transgress the law, morality and ethics. These qualities, which are historically
associated with civilizational concepts that have its foundations in the
tradition of religious cultures, curiously as the idea of redemption, the one
which gives the title to this film. Something that many modern philosophers
consider a mistake, as the influential novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, who
argues that the code of good and evil of the man, with the emotional
connotations of elevation, enhancement, nobility, reverence, grandeur belong
only to universe of human values, which, as the cited author mention, religion
has wrongly appropriated.
Fact is, in general
terms, perhaps nothing is worse for an individual's life than jail. Even the
disease, or poverty, loneliness or even death. Perhaps none of those compares
to an experience that, by definition, exclude the possibility of living, the
imposition of something that completely negates any chance of freedom, free
will or individuality.
The Shawshank
Redemption (1994) is an immensely popular film and survived to the times with
praise. It is a classic movie. Worshiped, televised, revisited, frequently on
the tops of moviegoers and rated by the public and critics. However, here is a
prison movie - the most horrendous and terrible fate that a citizen can have.
The plot shows no carnal love, no beautiful landscapes, there are no special
effects, and its director, Frank Darabont, says his directing style is the
invisible, and his priority is for a narration on the classical narrative
structure, in a way that his own style does not overshadow or overlaps the
message of his films. Still, what makes this such a popular movie?
It is curious to
think about and also realize how dramas that take place in prison, as the
claustrophobic Midnight Express (1978), are portraits invariably anxious,
sufferable, but which eventually awaken this fascination about incarceration,
despite all the compulsory sadism. As a direct opposite of freedom, the prison
makes up the other side of something that, in the end, is of the same coin,
which is existence. In these films is important to figure out how, in prison,
it is established a new social organization, and this is evidenced in
narratives that have their beginning in the principles of surveying and
impulses of the human mind demonstrated by Sigmund Freud, which are violence
and the sex. That is
why, whenever someone is arrested, initially is a victim of extreme violence,
and immediately is beaten up or raped. Back to the ground zero, to the Stone
Age.
Over time, new facets
and nuances of social organization are showing up and revealing the behavior of
inmates, in a wide range that demonstrate parallels with the kind organization
typical of free and civilized societies: monetary exchange, games of interest,
division of labor, wage labor, hierarchy etc. To the extent that the detention
itself shows its particular way of civilization, there is also a whole arsenal
of feelings that follows the primitive ones, ranging from melancholy to
madness; disgust to dignity; from guilt to grace; rebellion to courage.
Freud asserted that,
reduced to extreme deprivation, human beings lose their spirituality and would
show their true nature, behaving like an animal. And it is around this
possibility that the plot of the film is conducted in such a way that, despite
all the oppressive forms which the characters must face, as schemes of
political, religious and economic controls, as demonstrated by Anthony Burgess
and Stanley Kubrick in A Clockwork Orange (1971), or Ken Kesey and Milos Forman
in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), there is a glimmer of hope, a
humanity element that can save and redeem society and the individual, in this
story that actually was written by Stephen King, wrongly known for being an
author who compose only horror stories - but actually someone who tries to find
some humanity in the midst of barbarism.
A film about freedom?
But after all, what is the ideal of freedom? Does this possibility really exist
in society? The theme is of an immense philosophical complexity, and does not
fit to a review of a specific movie. But it should be noted here that one of
the great intellectuals of the last century, Isaiah Berlin, political
philosopher at Oxford University, believed that there were two possibilities.
Berlin came to this conclusion in an article that was one of the great
ideological foundation of the Cold War, named "Two Concepts of
Liberty" (1958), after reflecting on the fact that countries like the
former Soviet Union, which in the name of freedom and an ideal of a society
fairer and equitable, ended up as stage of oppression, endless murderers and
tyrant regime. From contexts like these, emerged concepts as the Positive
Liberty and the Negative Liberty. In general, the Positive Liberty was born
from the belief of revolutionary leaders and is guided by the view that freedom
is for something, for some ideal to society – for instance, as promoted by the
French Revolution and socialist revolutions. The freedom to rebuilt society and
build something new, which will result in a better world - even if it involves coercion
of the masses. Berlin said that this kind of freedom always lead society into
chaos and would fail because it is guided by the false belief that there is
only one answer to all ills - so the ends justify the means, and then itself
establishes the horror. Negative freedom has no such vision. It is not for
nothing. At its core, it has no purpose. It is understood to be the
non-interference of State power over individual actions: the individual is as
freer as the State allows. The lack of restrictions is therefore directly
proportional to the exercise of Negative Liberty. It is the freedom of every
individual to do what he wants, and nothing more. Governments and laws exist to
ensure freedom. A society without ideals, with nothing that goes beyond individual
desires and the ability to carry them out - which is the ideological basis of
liberalism and consumerism. A society of millions of selfish individuals, that
perfectly matches the ideas of Russian philosopher Ayn Rand, who adopted the
United States as her nation and then became an influential novelist with “The
Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged”.
In the essence these
two concepts of freedom, there is an implicit conflict between liberalism and
socialism, the principle of the Cold War, the big question of the twentieth
century. It is important to perceive how Shawshank Redemption is a story that
metaphorically focus on the debate on the social organization throughout the
century, and a pessimistic view of both any economic and political system to
ensure a legitimate form of freedom - the polarity between Positive Liberty and
Negative Liberty, between the Soviet Union and the United States. The moment
Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) went jail coincides with the time that succeeds the
end of World War II. From there, he, a banking and economist, finds himself
caught in his own system, being exploited by prison controllers, the symbolic
figure of an absolutely corrupt State and economic organization. Also very
interesting is to find out how the new presence of the young rocker and
juvenile delinquent, already decades later, promotes a new freshness to that
social environment, and brings with him hope of freedom for Dufresne, which is
immediately aborted by the strength of the State and the economic forces - he is
unable to run away, nor help the protagonist to escape (an obvious reference to
counterculture).
But is there any real
possibility of real freedom? That is what makes this movie so beloved and
popular. It is humanity itself, the sense of duty, belief in the viability of a
redemption. There are hundreds of book about this theme, as for instance the
classic Man's Searching for Meaning, based on a true story. Viktor Frankl,
Austrian Jewish doctor caught during World War II, entered the concentration
camp determined to conserve the integrity of his soul, and not let his spirit
be slaughtered by the executioners of his body. Frankl noted that all
prisoners, those who kept their better self-control and sanity were those who
had a strong sense of duty, mission and obligation. The meaning of life, Frankl
concluded, was the secret of the strength of some men, while others, deprived
of a reason to support the exterior suffering, were besieged from within by a
tyrant even more treacherous than Hitler - the feeling of living an absurd
futility.
This dream of
freedom, this form of redemption, it is proper to the whole mythological
journey of every hero archetype, something that scholars such as Joseph
Campbell mentioned in classic books such as The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It
was the sense of humanity and the high feeling of pure friendship and
compassion that saved Dufresne and Red Redding (Morgan Freeman). Serenity.
Resignation. The belief in a return, in a life that is complete out of their
physical limitations.
The poster of Rita
Hayworth on the wall, and the vast tunnel that opens through her image, and
this tunnel is evidently a highly symbolic element (a return to the womb, an
immersion inside mental state), dates back to something too human between men:
the first sculpture ever made by humanity, Venus of Willendorf, sculpted more
than 24,000 years ago, was precisely the image of a woman with voluptuous,
well-endowed, showy, just to give a sensation of comfort to the nomad, a small
amulet that made him feel safe and supported while going through long periods
of pilgrimage and drought.
No man invents the
meaning of life: each one is, as it were, surrounded and trapped by the very
meaning of life. It marks and fix at a point in time and space, the center of
your personal reality, but only visible from within. Maybe this was why
Shawshank Redemption is a film that says both people who apparently can be
aware.
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