The Shawshank Redemption – There’s a bird that’s meant to fly

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I’ve watched many movies, but those that really impressed me are still from the 1990s. It were happy years of youth, years filled with movies; I would always be lost in those beautiful stories, unable to pull myself away. To this day, many years later, when I recall those wonderful times spent in love with movies, a sense of sweetness still arises in my heart. The Shawshank Redemption is a movie about faith and perseverance, but it has nothing to do with love. Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) is a banker who was wrongly sent to Shawshank Prison after being found guilty of killing his wife and her lover. There, he went through a truly terrible time, plunging suddenly from a life in the upper classes into an abyss of suffering: in dark, cramped, and damp prisons, he was subjected to brutal treatment by strong prison guards, faced violent attacks from fellow prisoners who became homosexuals due to sexual repression, had to endure simple and crude food, as well as various other horrors he had never experienced or imagined before. He faced it all in silence and calm; he had never been a timid or noisy person. No ordinary fear, confusion, or unease could be seen in his eyes; he observed, lived, and thought in his own world as if no one else existed, and no one could decipher his inner thoughts. He may seem frail, yet he is able to resist external aggression and oppression for a long time. Some say Andy is a Capricorn; I like that idea. His stubbornness and persistence – other than Capricorn, I can think of no other possibility. Reid’s description of prison life is very apt: “When you first arrive in prison, you hate the high walls surrounding you” ； Gradually, you get used to living in it ； In the end, you’ll find yourself having to rely on it to survive…” But Andy was different; throughout his long and dark years in prison, he never gave up. On the contrary, he kept resisting his own \"systematization.\" He helped the prison guards evade taxes, in exchange for which he got a few bottles of cold beer from his fellow prisoners. While reading this passage, I paid close attention to what Andy asked the prison guards for: cold beer. This beer that had been frozen symbolized a certain degree of freedom. As the fellow prisoners sat together, enjoying the cold beer they hadn’t had in ages and feeling as free as if they were on their own balconies, Andy did not join them in celebrating. Instead, he sat alone at a distance by the wall, bathed in the golden sunset, with a strange smile on his face. The freedom he felt, unlike that of his fellow prisoners, was not merely the sensory pleasure and sense of freedom brought about by cold beer; it was rather the freedom to use his intelligence and professional skills for the first time since being imprisoned in order to earn respect and thereby regain his vitality. It can be said that that conversation on the rooftop changed his way of living and thinking while in prison. From then on, prison guards flocked to Andy for financial advice, and even the warden chose him to launder money for him. For many people, Andy is lucky to have been able to switch to working in the prison library, leading a life that is akin to that of a \"white-collar worker\" in prison – a life that many dream of. Andy gained the warden’s “approval” and accepted the job calmly. It’s just that what seems like ordinary library work becomes unusual when it falls into Andy’s hands. No one could persist like Andy, sending a letter once a week without giving up, until the relevant authorities grew fed up and allocated funds and donated books for him. When the prison guard took him to see the huge pile of books in the library and rudely ordered him to tidy them up as soon as possible, that strange smile appeared on Andy’s face once again. That same smile would appear several times in the movie; in my opinion, it represented Andy’s inner satisfaction, his longing for freedom, and hope. I always smiled as I watched Andy put away his books, muttering to himself, “From today on, I’ll write two letters per week…” Then he took the old record donated by someone else and played Mozart’s piece, The Marriage of Figaro, in the prison’s recording studio. As the soothing music played, Andy sat in the prison guard’s office chair, enjoying a sense of freedom he hadn’t felt in ages, lost in the music… He even locked the door and turned up the volume to its maximum, allowing the beautiful music, which was so out of place in a prison setting, to fill Shawshank. It was a stunning moment; everyone stopped and looked up in the direction from where the music was coming. They might not have understood Mozart’s music, but rather than being moved by its charm, they were attracted by the ability to listen to music freely and to experience the realities of life. In that moment, time seemed to stand still; there were no prisons, no prison guards, no constraints, no structured life – only music, floating freely in the skies of Shawshank… By the time the furious warden and prison guards rushed over, Andy was with his eyes closed, enjoying that wonderful moment. I think at that moment, the warden must have felt fear. When he saw a group of prisoners who had long lost their dignity and given up resisting, looking up at the same part of the sky in the same posture for the first time, with the same gleam in their eyes – a gleam of eagerness, hope, and longing for freedom – it was only natural for him, as a supervisor, to feel panicked. The Shawshank Redemption is a spiritual redemption, not a mass escape. Escaping from prison only allows one to leave it in a formal sense. And redemption enables people to restore their longing for freedom from within, thus truly finding the path to freedom. Andy said, “Get busy living, or get busy dying” – obviously, Andy belongs to the former group. Not only did he do this himself, but he also encouraged his fellow prisoners to develop interests and acquire knowledge through various means, in order to enrich their lives rather than just focusing on dying. He also took great care to nurture the lovable little Tom, helping him transform from a idle thief who was arrested repeatedly into a motivated young person eager to acquire knowledge, and he successfully passed the college entrance examination. Through his actions, Andy expresses his resistance to being assimilated. If he were to give up this resistance, then perhaps one day he would end up like Old Boo and Red, who have become accustomed to a life of control and manipulation; they go from despair to disappointment, and gradually give up hope until they can no longer adapt to a free life... There are moments of despair in this process. When Andy hears from Tom that someone else is the culprit behind the murder of his wife, he happily goes to the warden’s office to share this exciting news. Naively, he thinks that the warden, who has benefited greatly from his help, will now be his friend and will be happy for him and advocate on his behalf. Unexpectantly, the cunning warden, in order to keep Andy by his side, killed the only person who knew the truth, Tom, thereby eliminating Andy’s chance of being reborn. It was the darkest period of Andy’s time in prison, spent in a dark cell with no light at all, in misery, despair, and ruin. He had never been so disheartened; even when he first entered prison, during those most difficult times when he was suffering the most from imprisonment, he had not felt as fearful and lost as he does now. When the warden opened the door to the dungeon and asked if he had thought it through, he compromised. The foolish warden believed in his compromise, not realizing that it was merely a decision he made after enduring long periods of darkness: to leave this filthy place and seek true freedom. On that stormy night, the most dramatic scene in the film took place: Andy, enduring the horrible stench of the sewer, crawled for a distance equivalent to five football fields; then he took off his filthy prison clothes, stretched out his arms to embrace the freedom that truly belonged to him, allowing the rain to wash away 20 years of shame and suffering… It was an escape, but not an ordinary one. It was a 20-year journey of self-redemption. According to Reid’s account, this incredible escape is so amazing that it’s breathtaking. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing the warden throw stones at the posters, and witnessing his face contorted with shock and anger after the hollow clang of the stones hitting them. There is a bird that is destined never to be caged, for its feathers are too bright. Andy is such a free bird; he is destined to fly freely in the sky that belongs to him……