Great Adaptations: The Shawshank Redemption
A great adaptation should give you the ability to look at both the book and film in different lights after consuming each piece. There is an immediate compare and contrast. The whole notion of 'the book is always better than the movie' isn't always true. It's not common but it happens. What is even more rare is to have both the book and the adaptation of it manage to be different yet both great.
Reading Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption felt like watching a fisherman cast a series of lines out to catch a fish. Here's the opening paragraph:
"There's a guy like me in every state and federal prison in America, I guess- I'm the guy who can get it for you. Tailor-made cigarettes, a bag of reefer if you're partial to that, a bottle of brandy to celebrate your son or daughter's high school graduation, or almost anything else...within reason, that is. It wasn't always that way."
The next paragraphs tell us how Red got to Shawshank. What his crimes were. Something the movie dosn't go into detail. Red then goes into more detail about the items he was able to procure for inmates. Then comes the hook "And so when Andy Dufrasne came to me in 1949 and asked if I could smuggle Rita Hayworth into the prison for him, I said it would be no problem at all. And it wasn't." There are no chapters breaks or sections 1, 2, 3 like the other novellas he wrote. Instead, there are paragraph breaks. The last sentence is enticing enough to make you want to continue. So in the next part after the paragraph break King goes into detail as to how Andy got there. Then comes the hook for the next piece of info. He teases a small bit of info and then pays it off later. This pattern of going into detail about a particular character or event and ending with setting something else up later on in the story continues throughout the book.
It's suited to Darabont's style of storytelling. Shawshank takes on an almost episodic structure which doles out just enough information to entice the viewer into the next episode. This structure is repeated in Green Mile which, suits the serialized novel it's based off of.
I've seen Shawshank Redemption probably 7 times. I wouldn't put in my top 100. Not even in my top 200. But I continue to come back to it because of it's story and the characters. It's missing something and I can't quite put my finger on it. I will say after reading the novella it was based on, the film has risen for me and is at a place where I don't see it leaving. In the small club of film adaptations better than the book they were based on. Frank Darabont has done this with The Mist. Swapping out the book ending for an ending so devastating, the author Stephen King phoned him and said he wished he thought of it.
Darabont gets King. Like few other directors. Flanagan gets him. Reiner gets him. Are there better King based films than Shawshank? I think so. The Shining for one but that is an entirely different beast. Carrie is another. What Darabont understands is the humanity King brings to his characters. He is obsessed with the everyday Joe. That is why he is batting a 3-0 average when it comes to adaptations. This was his first crack at bat and he knocked it outta the park. I treat every book to film adaptation on a case by case basis. In the case of Shawshank though, Darabont wrote a script that maintained the voice of King while breathing new life into the story. Here's how.
Red
The book
Red is described in a single line. Irish and white. So when Morgan Freeman was suggested, Darabont loved the idea. His crime is never revealed in the movie but is revealed in the second paragraph in the book. He put a large insurance policy on the wife and then fixed the brakes of the Chevrolet coupe her father had given her as a wedding present. What he wasn't expecting was he stopping to pick the neighbor woman and the neighbor woman's infant son on their way into town. The brakes let go and the car crashed and burst into flames.
The movie
This is Red's movie. So why leave out why he is in Shawshank? It's alot easier to sympathize with someone not knowing the crime they committed.
Red's arc is essentially 3 scenes spread out over the beginning, middle and end. The ones in which he has parole hearings. Morgan has said in an interview that those 3 scenes are the ones he is most proud of in his career. It tracks the character. Though we don't get to see what brought him to Shawshank, we do see a picture of him as a young kid. Right before we see REJECTED stamped next to it.
Andy Dufrasne
Andy's arc is pretty much the same in the movie as described in the book. Like Red though he described differently. Small, mousy hair and glasses. The opposite of Tim Robbins. Yet it's impossible to read the novella and not picture Tim as Andy.
We don't really learn a lot about Andy outside Shawshank. This is a bold choice because it keeps in tune with the notion of the tall tale being told by Red.
Andy's social cues are...off. To put it mildly. When on the stand, he delivers his defense coldly and unmoved. That is just the way he is. It makes him come off as remorseless. As the story progresses, we see Andy as calculating and patient. It is both a strength and a weakness. A weakness because it gives him no sympathy for the jury who votes guilty. A strength because he is able to methodically chip away at concrete for over 20 years with a rock hammer.
Byron Hadley
The Book
Byron Hadley gets transferred to another prison before Andy escapes. He also has a heart attack. I'm sure for casting reasons, the guards at the prison kept their jobs the whole time without being rotated out of the system into another prison.
The Movie
This is a story told through Red's point of view from his memory. As such, the inmates who were close to him all those years are able to be fully realized. The guards and the warden are rough sketches. Symbols of the institution of prison. They get a paragraph here or there but not to the extent of Andy, Red or Brooks.
Warden Samuel Norton
The book
Warden Norton is the third warden we meet. What both mediums have in common in regards to Norton is he is a devoutly religous person. Down to the "His Judgment Rightly Cometh and Soon" placard he has hanging on his office wall. He is corrupt just as he is shown in the movie. But there's no true evil villain in the novella. Because he doesn't orchestrate the murder of Tommy Williams nor does anything get out about the corruption of Shawshank, Warden Samuel Norton simply resigns from his post.
The movie
The corruption at Shawshank and murder of Tommy Williams get out thanks to Andy. Leading to the police coming to Shawshank. Warden "has no intention of going quiely." He ends his life by shooting himself in the chin.
Brooks Hanlen
The Book
Brooks gets a couple paragraphs in the novella. His fate is less grim. He is paroled and spends his remaining years in nursing home where he dies of natural causes.
The Movie
Brooks' fate hammers home how heartbreaking it can be being institutionalized. "They give you life. That's exactly what they take away." The feelings Red has once he is paroled is transferred to Brooks when he is paroled. How fast the world has gotten since he was last on the outside. It comes at a crucial point in the movie.
Music On the PA
This was not in the book at all. But it very much represents what the movie is about. The thing that can't be bound by brick walls. Hope. Andy's act is one of defiance. The simplicity of music as rebellion. A place they can't touch.
Tommy Williams
When Tommy Williams enters the picture, Andy and Red and the prison itself are all well established. Tommy adds a wrinkle to the story that permeates through to the end.
The Book
His fate in the book is getting transferred out of Shawshank after the Warden realizes there is a possibility of his testimony springing Andy.
The Movie
Tommy asks Andy to help him out with a high school equivalency exam.
When Tommy tells Andy and Red the story it matches the book. Just as it matches when Andy tells the Warden and the Warden comments on how he can't believe how easy Andy was taken in by it. "How can you be so obtuse?" is a quote not in the book that the warden throws back at him later on.
Tommy passing with a C+ average brings the briefest of smile to Andy. This scene is immediately followed by Tommy being set up by the Warden and executed by Hadley.
Before it was money schemes and roughing up prisoners for the Warden and Hadley. Now it's cold blooded murder. Their come uppance later on tastes sweeter than if it was without what they did to Tommy.
The scene afterwards gives Bob Gunton his showcase at how evil the warden can get. At this point in the story, Andy is at his lowest. It is now when the warden throws back "Am I being obtuse?" to Andy. The film echoes this back and forth quoting in the escape sequence. Which, after what Andy has just been through, now is set in motion.
The Ensemble
The broad strokes of characters like Heywood (William Sadler) and David Proval's character are able to create a commeraderie with the inmates while Andy is in prison and after he escapes. There are no racial divisions in the prison. It's not Oz where the prisoners are divided into groups by race and ideology. When you factor this in, on a realistic level the movie almost doesn't work. It's a tall tale about an almost mythical figure. So the stories about him being passed on amongst the inmates after he's long gone contribute to that bigger than life story.
The Escape
For me the, the scariest part of the book is how Red describes Andy crawling through the pipe:
"He crawled through foulness that I either can't imagine or don't want to imagine. Maybe the rats scattered in front of him or maybe they went for him the way animals sometimes do when they have a chance to grow bold in the dark. He must have had just enough clearance at the shoulders to keep moving and pobably had to shove himself in the places where the lengths of pipe were joined. If it had been me the claustrophobia would have driven me mad a dozen times over. But he did it."
WPA concrete is mentioned and given a brief history. As is Andy's three classes in geometry. All you need is time and pressure.
This is where the book one ups the movie. It gives a better feeling of time. The movie doesn't mention how much of a gamble burying the letter under the oak tree is. The book explains how human progress could wipe that chance out by building something over the place where it was buried.
Andy and Red never meet up either. There's no Frank Capra ending. Not meeting Andy gives Red this sense of hope that drives him forward. It's ambiguous but it gives him purpose.
The strength of the movie over the novella lay in 2 principal reasons: (1) the characterizations of Warden Norton, Brooks Hanlen and Tommy Williams and (2) the music scene which summarizes the character of Andy Dufrasne.
Comments
Post a Comment