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Drum: INSIGHT
It was a flop when it was released in the cinemas, but The Shawshank
Redemption is now everybody’s favourite ‘prison movie’. Shawshank’s
fans regard it as a modern-day parable, an uplifting tale of triumph over
adversity – it’s a prison movie, but it’s also more than that. Drum goes
to prison to find the truth behind the fiction. Jon Hill on the inside.
Shawshank
Redemption Song
F
or its star Tim Robbins, the themes are universal: “…although not everybody has
been in jail, on a deeper, more metaphysical level, many people feel enslaved by
their environment, their jobs, their relationships – by whatever it is in the course
of their lives that puts walls and bars around them.”
Though a movie buff, and a lover of fiction and
storytelling myself, it’s this ‘deeper, more
metaphysical level’ that I have a problem with. Like
‘drug movies’, ‘prison movies’ cannot help but both
glamorise and trivialise the lifestyles of the people
they portray.
find the fundamental, if necessary, untruth of almost
all prison movies – even the beloved Shawshank –
infuriating. By making the prisoners’ journeys
symbolic and their struggles allegorical, cinema both
romanticises and diminishes the truth that lies
behind the fiction.
Similarly, the ‘prison movie’ is seldom really about
prison – prison is a metaphorical backdrop, a stage
on which attractive folk can struggle, succeed, and
impart perfunctory lessons about the human
condition, hopefully before the cinemagoer gets
bored. Moreover, the typical structure of the
Hollywood movie cannot help but give the lie to the
reality of prison life. The priority of the filmmaker
is to keep the audience engaged, to progress briskly
along a predictable narrative arc towards a logical
and satisfying conclusion.
Real prison life is not romantic. It is not a backdrop
against which great metaphysical dramas are played
out. Prison life is routine and methodical – it does
not have the inexorable narrative momentum of the
movies, no promise of a heart-warming pay-off. One
day bleeds into the next, and into the next, and into
the next. Battles won and lost in p rison are not epic
or figurative. The hardships endured are not stops
on the road to deliverance. Each day is a dreary
accumulation of tiny indignities, which break as
many spirits as they harden.
Of course, the filmmaker would argue that his or
her job is to entertain rather than to educate, but as
someone who works in a prison, I can’t help but
One of the most iconic moments of Shawshank
comes when Robbins’ Andy Dufresne uses his
privileged position with the prison governor to gain