The
Shawshank Redemption:
Stephen King, Frank Darabont and the Art of Adaptation
The Shawshank Redemption, the 1994
movie directed by Frank Darabont, and its literary original, the short novel Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
by Stephen King, first published in 1982, make for a terribly fascinating
comparative study. Adaptation is an art, though it is seldom practiced as one,
and there are few better examples when the collaboration between different
mediums produced a new masterpiece without
ruining the old one. The symbiosis between Mr King and Mr Darabont is much the
same as the one between Mozart and Liszt that led to the creation of Réminiscences de Don Juan, a masterpiece
that couldn’t have existed but for both
composers.
I had seen
the movie quite a few times before I finally read the novel. This may explain
why I am biased in favour of Mr Darabont. Comparisons are by definition the
lowest form of criticism; when so different mediums are concerned, comparisons
are indeed stupid. And yet, they are hard to avoid. I do like Mr King’s short novel;
it’s a brilliantly written first person narrative, a moving, subtle, funny, and
brutal story of hope and courage; it supplies plenty of background you don’t
get on the screen. But I do prefer Mr Darabont’s interpretation. Quite apart from
his work as a director, which is in fact superior to Mr King’s narrative as far
as suspense is concerned (simply compare the discovery of Andy’s escape and
you’ll know what I mean), Mr Darabont did an extraordinary job with the
adaptation. The screenplay is very close to the novel, with quite a few
striking phrases lift verbatim, yet it contains so many imaginative changes and
re-arrangements, that it almost
amounts to an original work. Let’s have a closer look at them.
Spoilers ahead!
The art of
adaptation, first of all, is the art of compression. Mr Darabont’s ability in
this department is remarkable, to say the least. He has stripped off everything
which is superfluous in Mr King’s work, everything that’s not quite essential
for the characters or the plot. For example, there is only one warden in the
movie (not three as in the novel), the somewhat drawn-out conversations between
Red and Andy are masterfully abridged, and so is Red’s main narrative. It may
be argued that the movie thus loses some depth. This is true, of course, but it
can’t be helped. It is the necessary evil that must be endured. The amazing
thing about Mr Darabont is that his script loses very little depth while at the
same time it gains enormously in terms of concision. Consider the matter on “buggery”
in jail. It is described in (sometimes gruesome) detail on the page. It is shortened
and toned down on the screen, but hardly less effective:
It
comes as no surprise to most these days that there’s a lot of buggery going on
inside the watts – except to some of the new fish, maybe, who have the
misfortune to be young, slim, good-looking, and unwary – but homosexuality,
like straight sex, comes in a hundred different shapes and forms. There are men
who can’t stand to be without sex of some kind and turn to another man to keep
from going crazy. Usually what follows is an arrangement between two
fundamentally heterosexual men, although I’ve sometimes wondered if they are
quite as heterosexual as they thought they were going to be when they get back
to their wives or their girlfriends.
There
are also men who get “turned” in prison. In the current parlance they “go gay,”
or “come out of the closet.” Mostly (but not always) they play the female, and
their favors are competed for fiercely.
And
then there are the sisters.
They
are to prison society what the rapist is to the society outside the walls.
All this is
summarized on the screen in two lines:
Andy:
I don't suppose it would help if I told them [the Sisters] that I'm not
homosexual.
Red:
Neither are they. You have to be human first. They don't qualify.
Rigorous
cutting may be the beginning, but the changing
is where the true merit – or lack of it – is shown most clearly. Mr Darabont
has introduced countless new elements. The most notable is the poignant episode
with the duet from Mozart’s Le Nozze di
Figaro. I wonder why Stephen King didn’t like it; perhaps because he knew
it was an improvement and wished he had thought of it himself. For my money, it
is among the most memorable sequences from a movie that hardly contains a
single minute that is forgettable. The scene has become iconic, and rightly so:
The Mozart
interlude is something completely new; 100% Mr Darabont’s invention. Other
similar episodes, smaller but even better integrated into the plot, include the
“new fish” betting and Hadley’s beating to death the so-called “Fat Ass”, the
warden’s “welcome address” and his Bible quote contest with Andy, Tommy’s murder and quite
a few other minor touches (including the funny cataloguing of The Count of Monte Cristo in the “educational” section of
the prison library). Most important of all, the escape, its explanation and its
aftermath are changed to a much more dramatic and emotionally
satisfying version. To my mind, virtually all of these changes are
improvements. In the novel, the warden remains alive and quits a broken man, Tommy
is not killed but seduced by another prison with lighter regime, Hadley
disappears from the story much earlier and with much lesser burden on his
conscience, and Andy has some friend of his arranging the fake personality and
the little fortune to start with on the outside. The hilarious conversation
between Red and Andy in the library, which explains the “filtering” of the
money, is actually missing from the novel. The escape in the movie is an
outstanding scene:
It may be argued that this is less
convincing than the more speculative version in the novel. The making up of a
fictional person by mail has always seemed to me slightly incredible. Likewise,
Andy’s stealing the warden’s polished shoes and suit. But these are
insignificant quibbles. No one can deny that the movie’s ending is far more
effective than the one in the book. It also makes the reference to Monte Cristo
earlier more relevant. Neat touch of poetic justice.
Somewhat
surprisingly, the minor characters are better developed on the screen. The
reason is that Mr Darabont sticks to them until, while Mr King drops them before,
their full potential is realised. He turned Norton and Hadley into more frightening
incarnations of sadism than they are in the novel. The cocky Tommy and the
stuttering Heywood are also more memorable on the screen than they are on
paper. (Indeed, Heywood, played by the fantastic William Sadler, is never mentioned in
the novel!) The greatest improvement, however, is the
heartrending story of Brooksie. This is not entirely Mr Darabont’s invention – he
borrowed some phrases from Red’s own story in the book – but he greatly expanded
the meagre original material. Brooks and Jake are barely mentioned in the
novel. In the movie, they form an important subplot that unfolds from the their
first meeting with Andy in the canteen, through their work together later in
the library and Brooks’ putting a knife to Heywood’s throat, finally to the
tragic outcome on the outside. James Whitmore gave an unforgettable performance:
In most cases,
however, Mr Darabont’s treatment is very subtle indeed. He completely overhauled the
original, transposing some parts from the beginning of the novel to the end of
the movie, cutting something here, adding another thing there, seamlessly
blending his own invention with the novelist’s work. Even a brief list of his
changes, as shown above, can be tedious – if not actually misleading, for it
may suggest patchy and incoherent result which is simply not the case. To take
but two more among countless examples, Red’s great “rehabilitated”
speech in front of the last parole commission uses some phrases from the
very beginning of the novel; Andy’s classic “Get busy living, or get busy
dying!” originally belongs to Red and occurs for the first time in the very end
of the novel. The conclusion is nearly word for word the same in both, though.
And it’s worth quoting:
I find I am excited, so
excited I can hardly hold the pencil in my trembling hand. I think it is the
excitement that only a free man can feel, a free man starting a long journey
whose conclusion is uncertain.
I hope Andy is down there.
I hope I can make it
across the border.
I hope to see my friend
and shake his hand.
I hope the Pacific is as
blue as it has been in my dreams.
I hope.
