Love this. Wonderful portrait!

Absolute favourite role is Red from The Shawshank Redemption. He’s the heart and soul of the film. Really one of the all time great characters in any movie.

The movie also does a really subtle trick that harkens back to Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho: it shifts point of view characters. In Psycho it’s from the victim to the killer, but in this one it’s from Andy to Red. In both cases, it’s extremely jarring because the person we were following and identifying with is suddenly gone.

It’s brilliant. Through Red’s eyes we deeply feel the absence of Andy. We then begin to identify with Red and what he’s going through. That makes the film’s ending so incredibly powerful, you just want to stand up and cheer. It’s an absolute triumph of the human spirit!