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(Credit: Alamy)<\/p>\n
I have zero statistics to back this up, but in my experience, the most common answer to \u2018What\u2019s your favourite movie?\u2019 is \u2018The Shawshank Redemption<\/a>, dummy\u2019. People love this movie. It\u2019s the sort of film that appears nowhere in\u00a0Sight and Sound\u2019s list of the greatest 250 movies ever made but lands at number one in IMDb\u2019s list of the same name. In other words, it is the definition of a crowd-pleaser.<\/p>\n Frank Darabont\u2019s 1994 adaptation of Stephen King\u2019s novella follows two prisoners in the 1940s, Tim Robbins\u2019s Andy Dufresne and Morgan Freeman\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n However, of all the scenes, there is one that stands out for Darabont, and it\u2019s one of the least dramatic. In a 2019 interview with Deadline<\/a>, the director said, \u201cThe 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\u2019re talking about Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n The scene in question takes place shortly after Andy emerges from two brutal months of solitary confinement, looking as if he\u2019s 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\u2019t think he\u2019d be able to live outside prison and doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s healthy to indulge in fantasies of the outside. It prompts Andy to utter the immortal line, \u201cI guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just such a pleasure to shoot that,\u201d Darabont said. \u201cI think we did three takes, and then we were done. These guys just delivered the movie in that scene.\u201d He added, \u201cI 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, \u2018OK, I think we have the movie.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s a key moment because it hints at Andy\u2019s plans for the future and sets up the ending in which Red digs up the money that Andy buried in a hayfield. But it\u2019s also a key moment for the emotional arc of the story. \u201cIt\u2019s just a very honest and very beautiful scene,\u201d Darabont said. \u201cI\u2019m so proud of both those guys.\u201d<\/p>\n 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<\/a> of his work. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n Subscribe To The Far Out Newsletter <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credit: Alamy) I have zero statistics to back this up, but in my experience, the most common answer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,35938,3943,35939,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-72006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-frank-darabont","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-shawshank-redemption","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114445705872701023","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}