Daily Journal #93 - Shawshank

Here's something you might not know:  I love movies almost as much as I love baseball, and my favorite movie is The Shawshank Redemption starring honey-voice Morgan Freeman and long and lean Tim Robbins.  It doesn't make much sense that a die hard feminist like me would cite a movie with only 2 actresses (who incidentally spoke only 23 words of dialogue) as her all-time favorite.  It's not a "chick-flick" (whatever that means because the last time I checked I wasn't poultry, but I digress) and it's dark and bleak about prison and wrongful conviction and suicide.  Well, that's what it looks like it's about if you watch it with half a brain or half a heart.  This movie is pure brilliance.  And I'm about to tell you why.

Adapted from Stephen King's novella "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" from the book Different Seasons, this is a movie about relationships.  And relationships, for me, are the source of everything.  This movie was a love affair that didn't involve romance between Andy and Red, and love is what makes the world go 'round.

I know most of you, dear readers, are teenagers and in the midst of a rollercoaster ride of becoming.  And I know that I write from a place of privilege at almost 40 because I am no longer driven by the same force that propelled me over two decades ago.  And from my perch of perspective, I watch Shawshank understanding that love can exist in many forms.  That it's not "gay" for a man to love a man or for a woman to love a woman.  Love exists in many forms.

This movie is about the love between two guys whose paths crossed as fate would have it.  It's about that connection that you can feel instantly with another soul.  It's about vibrating at the same frequency with another person and then you vibrate toward each other.  (In science it's called "sympathetic vibrations".)  It's just pure beauty.  That Andy and Red found each other is perfection.  Because it didn't matter how much older Red was or that Andy was a different race.  They were on the same vibe and they became friends and they shared love - friendship, I-get-you, you-are-one-of-my-people love.

One of the often quoted lines from the movie says, "Geology is the study of pressure and time.  That's all it takes, really.  Pressure and time."  As each of us is granted the gift of a new day, may we remember that pushing ourselves against the comfort zone over and over again will result in the formation of a new us.  Because that is all it takes - pressure and time.

I'll see you in Zihuatanejo.