Is The Shawshank Redemption the best film ever?

London Times ^ | Christopher Goodwin

[Saije]

Frank Darabont, the director of The Shawshank Redemption, has words for the millions of people who believe his 1994 prison drama is the greatest film of all time. “I think that’s a little crackers, to be honest, especially when you think of the other films on the list.” He means films such as The Godfather, Citizen Kane, Lolita, Vertigo and foreign-language contenders like Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist, Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt, Luis Buñuel’s Belle de jour or Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.

But, hey, pointy-headed film critics can have their high­falutin’ crushes. There’s no getting round the fact that The Shawshank Redemption, which stars Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, is consistently being voted the best film ever in all sorts of readers’ polls. It currently sits atop the 250 best movies of all time on the world’s most popular cinema website, imdb.com, as it has done for most of the past decade...Empire’s readers have also voted Shawshank their favourite film of all time.

What gives? How has a film set mainly in a bleak prison, in which women are barely glimpsed, by an unknown first-time director, adapted from a little-known Stephen King novella, become such an enduring crowd-pleaser? Shawshank tells the story of the friendship of two prison inmates, Andy, played by Robbins, and Red, played by Freeman. It’s a film that can make strong men — including the rugby star Jonny Wilkinson, who loves it — blub like babies and insist that they will change their lives pronto. Devotees quote its life-affirming mantras: “You can get busy living or get busy dying”; “Fear can keep you a prisoner. Hope can set you free”.

[razorback-bert]

I guess I am the only one who like “
The Deer Hunter.”

[mysterio]

Might not be the best movie ever, but it’s a darned good one. And it’s the one that came closest to being as good as the SK book it’s based on.

[attiladhun2]

I wouldn't even walk-in on a Warren Beatty flick. I think the man is a full-of-himself colossal jerk.