Comparison Of The Book And Movie The Shawshank Redemption
The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King is a marvellous film and a brilliant storybook by Stephen King who he himself is a master storyteller. Comparing the book and movie of The Shawshank Redemption is like comparing two different currencies who portray the same aspect, they both have many concepts represented in them but the one major theme or concept that attracted many including myself is liberation. Both story writer and the filmmaker use freedom as an example that serves a large purpose for them, not only in prison but also in the extenet context about life.
Which in my own understanding says that even though something bad happened to you, you should not be depressed all of the time because of it like Andy says in both the book and film “get busy living or get busy dying'Now moving on to the not so many differences that the book and film share, and one of those main differences that startled me was the casting of the actors, where in the book Andy is mentioned and described as a short neat little man with sandy hair and small, clever hands, who wore gold rimmed spectacles. I really don’t understand how did they manage to cast Tim Robbins at all, a tall and slender man. The same goes for Morgan Freeman who portrayed Red, Red was mentioned to be of Irish ancestry, he wasn't black but after watching the whole movie I honestly can’t imagine any actor other than Morgan Freeman to take that role because he literally owned it. And that’s the most important thing about casting in my opinion seeing how absolutely amazing casting someone who captures the essence of a character can be, regardless of how they physically match the writer's formulation.
One of the saddest scenes in the movie was Brooks, the old prison librarian, who was released out of jail at an old age and unfortunately didn’t make it. I really like how realistic it is and how they portrayed what institutionalization does to a person. and how it led Brooks to commit suicide after he was released after almost 50 years of being jailed. Brooks is only mentioned once in the book so the entire section with his time on the outside and his eventual suicide was made up for the film. As the entire short novel is basically a somewhat journal written by Red or told from his point of view it makes the entire book and movie even more capturing, as it describes the unbelievable qualities that Andy Dufresne had gained over time at Shawshank. He was a regular guy with an amazing capacity for hope.
One of my favorite scenes of the film is a voiceover by Red where he is sitting more like remembering and missing the time he and his inmates shared with Andy:“I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend. “My final thoughts about it is that It's so inconceivable when a film lives up to or even goes beyond the expectations that you had of a book.
And even though this film or book doesn't pass the Bechdel test where it’s required to have at least two female characters to interact for more than 60 seconds and for that dialogue to not be about a man, there were barely any female characters in The Shawshank Redemption, except the brief mentioning of Rita Hayworth a female actress that Andy loved or more like used as an undercover for his escape. But i believe that it can somehow be excused considering the fact that shawshank is a name of a male prison so the existence of any females would be really weird.
