The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

The Shawshank Redemption is a movie about hope, faith and friendship. The friendship that is depicted in it is of a different kind as compared to most of the other movies. It is a story about two friends, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), a white banker wrongly charged with his wife’s murder and Ellis Boyd ‘Red’ Redding (Morgan Freeman), a black convict.

The movie starts with Andy being convicted with the murder of his wife and her lover. He is sentenced to a double life imprisonment and he lands up in Shawshank prison. Here he meets Red who is also serving a life sentence. Red is a guy who is ‘known to locate certain things from time to time,’ i.e. get things for a price in prison. The ‘sisters’, a bunch of homosexual guys, take a liking for Andy and are always after Andy. Andy lives the usual prison life without ever losing hope. Red, on the other hand, says to Andy that ‘Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.’

One day Andy uses his knowledge to help one of the officers in saving some taxes. Thus, begins a new chapter in his life. News spreads about Andy’s expertise in taxation matters and he starts doing the tax returns for all the prison guards. Warden Samuel Norton comes to know about Andy and engages him in his own financial matters, bulk of which involved covering the illicit money which he earned from various sources. If I say any further I will be spoiling your experience of watching the movie. So all I want to say is go and see it for yourself.

The Shawshank Redemption is an adaptation of the novella ‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption’ by Stephen King. Like all the movies adapted from books this arouses the question as to which is better. I have had the opportunity to read the novella as well as watch the movie (the latter a great many times). I liked the novella as well as the movie but I find the movie better. The novella fails to maintain the suspense which is brilliantly done in the movie. Also, the novella isn’t as successful in depicting the friendship of Red and Andy.

The Shawshank Redemption was nominated for 7 Oscars but was unable to win any of those. The best film award went to ‘Forrest Gump’ that year. There has been a lot of debate about which is a better movie and whether Shawshank should have won the Oscar instead of Forrest Gump. A few facts may help here. American Film Institute has ranked Shawshank at number 72 in the list of all time top 100 movies while Forrest Gump has been placed at number 76. IMDb, which is an internet database of movies and ranks movies based on the ratings given by users, puts Shawshank at number 2 (at times becoming number 1) while Forrest Gump languishes around 75. This in itself is enough for me to conclude that the Academy is nothing but a bunch of morons.

Shawshank was a flop at the box office. There can be many reasons which can be attributed to this. The name in itself was considered to be inappropriate for a movie; most of the movie being shot inside a prison didn’t inspire people to go to the theatre and watch it. As word spread around that this was a really good movie people started renting the VHS and the following year it became the highest rented movie of the year.

Most of the people who have seen the movie will agree with me that for almost 3/4ths of it one doesn’t think much about it but the last half an hour simply blows you away. Most of the movies which have a twist ending end up not being seen twice but this is not the case with this movie. When I saw the movie for the first time I liked it but my respect for the movie has been growing with the number of viewings. The more I see it the better I feel about it. In the last 4 months I have seen it 3 times. Also, I loved the movie so much that I went on to buy the book ‘Different Seasons’ which contains the novella. By this time I guess most of you would have understood that Shawshank is my favourite movie of all time and I believe that there can never be any other movie which comes close to this.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Apocalypse Now is probably the best war (or shall we say anti-war) movie ever to be made. It is one of my favourite movies if not the favourite (it’s difficult to decide with Shawshank and a few others coming close).

If I were to be very honest, I didn’t like the movie when I saw it for the first time. The reason being I was thinking it to be a war movie which would have grueling war scenes with gruesome battles ala Saving Private Ryan. Alas that was not to be! All it showed was a journey of a young captain through the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia. I had failed to understand that the movie was beyond the usual war movies. It was much more than that!

Though I had not liked the movie I kept on thinking about it, such was the impact of the movie. I decided to watch it once again and there was no looking back after that!! The movie is set during the Vietnam War. A young captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent on a mission which officially 'does not exist - nor will it ever exist'. The mission is to ‘terminate with extreme prejudice’ a renegade Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando). This colonel had set himself up as a local God in Cambodia and was waging his own war. The movie shows the journey of Captain Willard where he experiences different adventures ranging from a surfing crazy Lieutenant Colonel (Robert Duvall was simply amazing) to Playboy bunnies. Most of Captain Willard’s thoughts are communicated to us through his voice-over which provides for a really gripping atmosphere throughout the movie. As the journey progresses, sanity evaporates his and his fellow travelers’ minds. The dossier on the Colonel makes him wonder why it is that the powers that be want to kill the Colonel. The closer he gets to his destination the more confused he becomes about what he is going to do when he comes face to face with the Colonel.

The movie shows the insanity that prevailed during the Vietnam War and the way the war affected the minds of the people involved in it. It shows the inner battles which take place within all the participants in a war. It shows the horrors of the war without becoming a gore fest!

Francis Ford Coppola has made a masterpiece and proved once again that he is a genius. The acting was superb with Martin Sheen giving a very convincing performance as the young Colonel. Excellent performances by his boat crew as well especially by Sam Bottoms as Lance B. Johnson. A special mention needs to be made regarding the cinematography and sound effects for which the movie received Oscars. Some of the scenes are simply breath-taking while the music is amazing, haunting at times. The opening sequence is probably one of the best with the bombing of the jungle with ‘The End’ by ‘The Doors’ in the background. You can view the video below:



The movie was released in 1979 but a new ‘Redux’ version was released in 2001 with an added footage of about 45 minutes. There have been a lot of debates as to which is better – the original or the redux version. I have never seen the original (though I have read about the differences between the two versions) but I agree with some of the critics that some of the scenes in the redux version could have been done away with. However that does not, in any way, reduce the greatness of the movie.

I have seen a lot of discussion regarding the ending of the movie and how disconcerting it is for some of the viewers. All I can say is that the ending only adds to the eerie atmosphere of the movie and it results in the culmination of the madness that this entire movie is all about. To sum it all up, I will use the words of the director, 'This film isn't about Vietnam. This film IS Vietnam'.

---- Vikash Harlalka

Welcome to Movie-buffs, the blog!!

What is this blog?

We see on an average 2 movies every week and the average number of watchable released movies every week is 1, sometimes zero, so that leaves us with no option but to go scurrying to the video library and pick up a movie. And, it is not as if we dont know which one is what. We can check websites like IMDB - their ratings and comments. But more often than not, it is a biased picture of what freaks in Arakansas and Alaska may have felt. Or, it may be the state of mind of a movie critic that will be coloring the imaginations and thoughts of other viewers. Or, it may so happen that the reviewers are mostly aged between 40-60, and the rating will be as old. The end result is the same, in all the cases: You end up being misled.

The Indian movie reviewers dont have enough time left from rating crappy copies of Hollywood movies, and the so called Yashraj blockbusters - same story with different actors - repeating since 1920 BC.

So, a couple of people in their twenties - just like you, who like to watch movies, we will write reviews on the best movies that we have seen across genres. So that when you want to watch a movie the next time, you can check which ones to watch and which ones to watch again.

More about the bloggers:

We are two "Movie-buffs", who love watching movies in their pastime, and leave aside the Hindi potboilers, between them they will have seen more than 1000 movies across genres and ages, recommended or not recommended.

We will keep on posting regular reviews on the movies that we have seen.

Watch out this space for more!!