The Shawshank review on the main page (SPOILERS INSIDE)

[ethanwa]

Taken from the last paragraph of the 3.5 star movie review (out of 5).

A more subtle and insidious message of the film is disdain of religion and faith. Warden Norton is a devout Christian who urges his prisoners to study the bible. Norton is also shown time and again to be the most immoral and evil figure in The Shawshank Redemption. Andy uses his knowledge of the bible to quickly earn Norton's trust and to trick him--and that is the extent of Darabont's use of religion in the film. Nowhere is Darabont's message about religion clearer than when the camera lingers on Andy's defaced, gutted bible. This message stands in stark contrast to real-life stories of hardened criminals who have been successfully rehabilitated, adopted more ethical principles and found true redemption in religious teaching and in faith. While Darabont's emphasis on prison education is commendable, it is disheartening that he and other Hollywood figures feel the need to denigrate and vilify religion in their films.

I must say that this part of the movie review disturbs me. When I saw that the reviewer gave the movie 3.5 out of 5 to begin with, I was taken aback. I would say at a minimum most people give this movie 4+ stars, sometimes even 5, so I knew something was up.

Now, this is totally a guess here, but I feel the reviewers religious beliefs in the bible and Christianity has gotten in the way of an agnostic review. He's let his personal beliefs in religion, and his feelings about a scene in general, get to him to the point where he likes the movie less. As a viewer he has the right to feel that, but as a reviewer he needs to try and look beyond those feelings and judge the movie as a whole for what it is. It's like giving the movie "Shoot Em Up" a bad review because it has killing and you don't believe in that; It's a review that probably doesn't hold up the majority of the publics opinion and isn't a valid reason for most people to not go see the movie.

Anyway, I had to get that off my chest. I know many of you will disagree with me, but I found the last paragraph more of a preach rather than review.

Ethan


As a side note: The point of the warden's character could have been to show that just because bad people read the bible doesn't make them good people. And Andy knew that and he used religion (the bible) in a creative way to redeem himself. Some people could say that God gave him the gift of the bible to help him escape. Its all about how you look at the film and it's message.