Author: JESSICA00TC

Film Reviews · New Film Reviews

Film Review: Shawshank Redemption [1994]

Posted on by JESSICA00TC

Shawshank Redemption regularly tops ‘best films of all time’ lists, and despite being a box office disappointment at the time, received multiple award nominations, has become a fan favourite and was selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry. But is it actually a good film…?

Yes.

Obviously.

Shush.

Okay so, it’s a little mawkish, we never get to know the main character, it’s very long, the dialogue is deliberate, it’s almost universally bathed in a warm glow and it doesn’t break any rules or revolutionize the moviemaking business.

But isn’t that WHY it’s such a good film?

In 1940s Maine, banker Andy Dufresne is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences at Shawshank State Penitentiary. There he befriends contraband smuggler Ellis “Red” Redding, who is also serving a life sentence. The film charts the men’s friendship as Andy tries to prove his innocence and break free, all whilst…

Oddly, for a film set inside a prison, “The Shawshank Redemption” creates warm feelings in audiences because we become part of the prisoners’ extended family. Ignoring the cheap thrills of vicarious experiences and superficial shocks of emotion from similar films (in which we pretend we relate to a situation the majority of us, fingers crossed, can never understand), the voiceover conceit is used so well here that the ‘othering’ actually brings us closer.

I say this a lot but I find that I’m more open and receptive to ideas when they’re not being shoved down my throat but instead subtly slipped in through a warm hug of a film. If you have a message to share then don’t make me turn away from the screen in disgust by using a brutal beating as a shock tactic- make me love that character so

I HAVE to keep watching to check they’re okay.

Although the hero of the film is former banker Andy, the action is never seen from his point of view and the voice over is Red’s. The redemption, when it comes, is Red’s. Through Andy’s example we’ve been shown that if you keep true to yourself, not give up hope, set a great example, bide your time and grab that chance when it eventually comes… you can make it.

The voiceover can be a sticking point for some viewers but it’s key to the film’s structure and shows that the film is not about the hero but about our relationship with him, the curiosity, pity and admiration. It adds a level of mystery that having Andy as the heroic centre would have destroyed. Yes, it keeps the viewer at arms length but no, that doesn’t stop our enjoyment. It in fact adds another level of deeper meaning- bare with me, I’m going to get meta here…

We don’t actually know for sure whether Andy did or did not commit the murders. He says he didn’t. He’s a good man. He doesn’t lie. The men surrounding him believe he didn’t do it. We feel for them, for him. We believe he didn’t do it.

But we don’t know.

This film gives an audience a message of hope, something we’re undoubtedly desperate for. We want him to be innocent and by keeping him in the spotlight but inscrutable the film makes him so. Could the film possibly be commenting on our tendency to allow our emotional reactions to cloud our judgement, the same way a jury does…?

And even if it isn’t, even if there is no deeper meaning… does that necessarily make it a bad film?

I for one am all for a feel-good.

 

Classical Film Reviews · Film Reviews

Classic Film Review: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? [1962]

Posted on by JESSICA00TC

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane is an enduring example of grotesque LA gothic so legendary from 1950’s Sunset Boulevard. Here too we are both amused by the critique of the entertainment industry and horrified by the monsters it spawns! Yet here we see an even more disturbing and claustrophobic story. Two brilliant actresses bring their real-life rivalry to the screen as sisters and faded Hollywood stars.

Bette Davis plays the eponymous Baby Jane; a former child star of the vaudeville era, now a shrill gargoyle caked in makeup pancake thick. Joan Crawford plays her sister, Blanche, once a plain child who stepped out of her bullying sister’s spotlight to become a 20-something movie star, now a paraplegic trapped upstairs.

And what stairs! Alongside Davis and Crawford they dominate the frame. Indeed within the mansion in which the sisters reside we see only very few rooms and many, many shots of that looming staircase which so effectively divides the upstairs captivity of the paraplegic Blanche from the downstairs lair of the deranged Jane. In this hothouse sibling rivalry turns vicious.

The film begins in Baby Jane’s heyday, when she ruled the vaudeville stage and was famous for saccharine performances of “I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy”- sealed with a kiss and sent to heaven. Offstage the girl becomes a spoiled monster, screaming demands and humiliating the ordinary Blanche. As they reach their 20s Jane’s appeal fades and her films flop just as Blanche becomes a Hollywood queen!

…Until, that is

in a mysterious incident that was probably Jane’s fault, their car crushes Blanche against a gate and snaps her spine.

And thus we come to a rather large plot hole… why on Earth Jane, who most think is to blame for the accident, is put in charge of her sister’s ‘care’ is never really explained. Blanche has just two contacts with the outside world: her telephone and their kindly maid Elvira. Yet in Jane’s venomous hatred she tears the phone from the wall and beats Elvira from the house.

Casting is crucial to the success of the film and it is hard to imagine how director Robert Aldrich convinced the two stars to appear together- their antipathy was widely know. Both noted for being competitive, vain, touchy and later accused of abusing relatives in a tell-all book from a daughter. They had been rivals since the 30s and three decades later starred together perhaps merely to crush the other’s chances of receiving awards. In which case, it was Davis who won.

Her courageous portrayal of the demented, drunken former child star, for which she sheds all vanity and overacts with aplomb won her an Oscar nomination. Crawford plays the calm, kind, reasonable sister (or so we are led to believe). But sadly her twist comes so late that she comes off as rather less interesting.

The impact of “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” was immense in 1962. Today’s audiences, aware of the tell-all stories, don’t perhaps comprehend how thoroughly Crawford, and to a lesser extent Davis, trashed their screen images. Davis sifts her performance towards Jane’s pathological ego, encapsulated in macabre adult performance of “I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy.”

During Jane’s descent into madness, the film becomes less of a ‘camp classic’ and more of a genuine psychological horror story and all the better for it.