Best Stephen King adaptation, I thought I wouldn't cry as deeply as I had on movies of terrible but loving optimism and then, that beautiful score playing and watching Red and Andy meet up again at the end....I finish the movie and went to shit and cried hard in the bathroom
I love how it explores life in a prison, showing their routines but also how prison affects you psychologically. All the scenes where men are shown to be free in spirit are accompanied by music or strife or travelling and it's kind of crazy to then realize after the movie is over that our static urban lives are not much different than prisons themselves. Just part of the experience I suppose but it's great that the movie affects you that because ultimately that's what makes it so universal.
This is a movie about hope and freedom in a man's soul and above all it's about Red and Andy's friendship.
The score is such a beautiful piece of accompaniment that perfectly showcases the emotional truth and horror of every scene, it's shot by Roger Dealings so of course it looks great as hell especially when coming to prison for the first time, seeing all those men standing down there in the ground and the camera sweeps from far over them, it still looks really good despite the age.
The thing that stands out in the movie alongside it's hopeful themes even when it refuses to sugarcoat the harsh reality of evil in men, of hypocrite characters that just want to ruin it for everybody; lies the identity of it being an adaptation of a short story written by Stephen King. It's narrated throughout and the narration fits perfectly, like a story we are being told. Morgan Freeman's sad voice of a man who has gone through so much tone and it really completes the film perfectly. His voice really makes the movie go over much more smoothly and is a very important part of it, I don't think it would remotely be the same without it.
I have always thought that King captures America's normalness and character really well and this work atleast is perfectly suited to being adapted. It's a story about a men wrongly convicted and sentenced for life and then learning to make a new life and starting over, a man who refuses to let go of the goodness of society, goodness in men and the importance of hope and friendship even in a dreary soulless place like a prison. Along the way he manages to convince even others of their own humanness and the caged canary spirit of freedom in them, and it's beautiful to see that. In a way I suppose it is the prison version of Dead Poet's Society but since I haven't seen that film yet, I can't comment on it too much.
Love how the movie makes a very compelling case study on institutionalized men who are released from prison and don't know where else to go, the story of Brooks feels believable and tragic and universal. Love when movies teach you something important while making you sob lmao
P.S: the excessive"bull queer" scenes did take me out a bit watching this movie now for the first time but I suppose it's just something that happens in prisons. I'm even glad that it's there to break the monotony of its feel-goodness