in which i have a new favorite movie

watching shawshank redemption for the first time

I was not planning on writing anything today but then I got up at 2:30 am, couldn’t fall back asleep and proceeded to watch Shawshank Redemption instead of, you know, taking a melatonin, and now I have to talk about it.

A little background: I have been putting off watching Shawshank since 1994. Even though it is based on Stephen King short story, I had no desire to see it. The 2 1/2 hour runtime had a lot to do with it; I do not have the patience nor attention span to sit through long movies, especially if I already have trepidation about seeing it. So I did not go see it in the movie theater in 1994 and didn’t even think about it until it was released on DVD years later and I still thought of it as “that long movie I didn’t feel like watching.”

But I couldn’t shake it. It was on cable tv all the fucking time. Oh, I’d never turn it on in the beginning. I was only able to catch snippets here and there (and I did tune in once to the ending but I had read the King story, so it was fine) but I never stayed on the channel long enough to say it was an attempt at viewing the film. Later, there would be the internet and memes and lord know I saw enough Shawshank memes to make me feel like I could recite the movie by heart. And then there is my brother-in-law Matt, who has spent close to ten years trying to get me to watch what is his all time favorite movie. He’d harangue me in person, in text, on twitter, trying to get me to watch it. And I would just like to state for the record that he is 90% of the reason I finally watched Shawshank. The other ten percent is just because I finally felt like the time was right.

And so, at 2:30am on July 14, 2023, with the help of a bag of chips and 10mg of edibles, I sat down to watch Shawshank Redemption.

Have you ever felt joy? Like, pure unbridled joy that you feel in your heart, that makes you cry, that threatens to overwhelm you? That’s what I felt when the movie ended. I felt absolute joy at having watched it. Everything about Shawshank, from the writing to the acting to the cinematography, is flawless. It’s an absolute masterpiece. I am not mad I put it off so long and deprived myself of this joy for so almost 30 years, I honestly needed to wait until the time was right for me. But I still feel this weird sense of loss that I never experienced this film in a movie theater.

I needed this movie in my life, right at this moment, when I am feeling stressed out and overwhelmed. For 142 minutes I was fixated on the screen. I was mesmerized by the effortless flow of dialogue, the storytelling, the intricacies of the story itself playing out. Each minute that went by made me feel like I was in a museum looking at a piece of art; I wanted to take notes not about the movie, but about how I was feeling watching it. I don’t think I’ve ever been that affected by a movie before. The last time I felt this kind of emotion over a piece of media was when I read Blankets by Craig Thompson (highly recommended).

The joy I felt at the end of the movie had less to do with that ending than with the whole experience of watching something that was made with such care, such creativity, such talent. To watch that all unspool in front of you is a transcendental experience and I thank everyone involved in Shawshank for this. I also thank Matt for never giving up trying to get me to watch it.

And now I will spend the rest of my life not only thinking about this beautiful movie, this glorious work of art, but I will make it my entire personality to be enraged that The Shawshank Redemption - one of the best films I have ever seen - lost the best Oscar to Forrest Fucking Gump.