(Credit: Alamy)

I have zero statistics to back this up, but in my experience, the most common answer to ‘What’s your favourite movie?’ is ‘The Shawshank Redemption, dummy’. People love this movie. It’s the sort of film that appears nowhere in Sight and Sound’s list of the greatest 250 movies ever made but lands at number one in IMDb’s list of the same name. In other words, it is the definition of a crowd-pleaser.

Frank Darabont’s 1994 adaptation of Stephen King’s novella follows two prisoners in the 1940s, Tim Robbins’s Andy Dufresne and Morgan Freeman’s Red Redding, who form a friendship during their years of incarceration. While Red is content to serve his 40-year sentence, Andy dreams of escape. After being wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, he has two life sentences, and escaping is his only shot at freedom.

There are many memorable scenes in the movie, from the heartswelling ones, such as when Andy blasts The Marriage of Figaro through the prison loudspeakers, to the heartbreaking ones, such as when an elderly inmate hangs himself in his apartment after finding it impossible to adjust to the outside world following 50 years behind bars. There are plenty of harrowing ones as well that have to do with the abuse Andy suffers from prison wardens and his fellow inmates.

However, of all the scenes, there is one that stands out for Darabont, and it’s one of the least dramatic. In a 2019 interview with Deadline, the director said, “The most revisited day of filming for me was the simplest day of directing, which was having Tim and Morgan sitting in the shadow of the prison against the wall, and they’re talking about Mexico.”

The scene in question takes place shortly after Andy emerges from two brutal months of solitary confinement, looking as if he’s aged a decade. His desire to get out of Shawshank has grown even stronger, and his conversation with Red marks the first time that he reveals his dreams of living in Mexico. Red confides that he doesn’t think he’d be able to live outside prison and doesn’t think it’s healthy to indulge in fantasies of the outside. It prompts Andy to utter the immortal line, “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

“It was just such a pleasure to shoot that,” Darabont said. “I think we did three takes, and then we were done. These guys just delivered the movie in that scene.” He added, “I remember sitting on my apple box and just, you know, letting that moment wash over me because both of them were just so damn good. I sat there, and I thought, ‘OK, I think we have the movie.’”

It’s a key moment because it hints at Andy’s plans for the future and sets up the ending in which Red digs up the money that Andy buried in a hayfield. But it’s also a key moment for the emotional arc of the story. “It’s just a very honest and very beautiful scene,” Darabont said. “I’m so proud of both those guys.”

Shawshank Redemption was not a box office success when it was released, but it quickly became a sleeper hit, thanks in large part to the moving performances from Robbins and Freeman. Even Stephen King liked it and regularly lists it as one of his favourite adaptations of his work.

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