Asking the Right Questions
There are many ways to respond to the fact that The Shawshank Redemption is ranked #1 on the IMDB Top Movies chart. This is one of my favorites, because it concentrates not on how deserving (not very) the ranking is, but rather on why such an unlikely candidate has taken the top spot. Shawshank didn’t make a lot of money, didn’t win many awards (it lost Best Picture to Forrest Gump, but Pulp Fiction was the truly deserving candidate), has well-known-but-not-tremendous stars, and is part of a respected but not particularly beloved or well-represented genre. Nevertheless, I don’t find the ranking to be viscerally shocking. There’s something remarkably watchable to Shawshank; if I happen to find it on TV, I can start watching at any point and feel exceedingly comfortable. This is altogether odd for a film that features prison rape as a significant plot element.
Darabont has that ability — my students deeply desire to want to watch more episodes of The Walking Dead, yet constantly refer to it as “slow” and “boring.” There’s a contagious contemplative quality to his direction that I’ve now spent two quarters trying and failing to adequately describe.
Do you find Shawshank more re-watchable than Pulp Fiction?
(Same question, but you are coming in at the middle of the movie. Same question, but you are leaving a bit before the end.)
Watchability is such a funny thing, for me personally.
Personally, I do. Certainly, the movies I’ve seen since (hello, Hiroshima, Mon Amour have worn off the effect of the whole “but it’s not in linear time!” novelty of Pulp Fiction for me.* A good story remains a good story, and as SEK notes above [and Rob originally], the element of watchability is particularly high with Darabont’s work.
That said, the IMDB-metric is completely worthless. As others here and elsewhere note, it’s biased towards recent films. Additionally, the rate at which the top numbers shift is pretty remarkable, reflecting recent biases. A quick internet search doesn’t show the cache, but for awhile, all three Lord of the Rings movies were in the top five. I happen to love them, and they’re very re-watchable to me, but even I acknowledge that not a one of them belongs in the top 10 [20?] films of all time.
Some years ago, some internet article asked if Shawshank was the best film to not win any oscar at all.** That’s a moderately fair question, but really, Shawshank is a well-told and well-acted story [even if the source material isn't superb]; neither revolutionary, nor poor, I personally think it treads that “too mudane to be all-time great/too understated to be fully recognized” line just about as frustratingly-perfectly as a movie can.
*[And that's sarcasm-free: when I first saw PF, I was a ripe old 14, and messing with linearity like that in a film was a minor revelation.]
**Yet again, a quick google search can’t reveal who. The major hits now ask whether Shawshank is best movie to not win the best picture award, which is different than not winning any oscar [actor/ess, supporting actor/ess, screenplay, etc.] at all.
Shawshank wasn’t even the best movie of 1994 not to win best picture.
The IMDB rating isn’t worthless. It doesn’t come close to the Platonic ideal of a listing of the undeniably great movies of all time, but it’s a nice snapshot of the zeitgeist as far as what movies are being admired/enjoyed and that has some value.
I’d like to see how the list has changed, month by month, over the past ten years or so. Does anyone know how to get that data?
Actually, when Robert mentioned the movie’s watchability, the first thing that came to mind was the book’s (and Stephen King’s, in general) readability. Even when King uses tropes and plot devices that make me want to throw his books against the wall, he’s got that quality.
I think its Morgan Freeman’s narration that does it- its a perfect “Wise man” pitch, that and the fact that Robbin’s Dufrene is essentially a cypher on which we like to project ourselves even with the aforementioned prison rape.
I share totally share your sense of the great watchability of Shawshank, Robert. I worry, though, that this feature is a symptom of a moral bogus-ness to the whole production.
Lots of melodramas have elements of wish-fulfillment to them. No shame in that. But in Shawshank, the way in which the wish is fulfilled–the way in which extreme degradation and injustice give way to perfect bliss–is so over the top, so removed from ordinary experience and from genuine possibilities of human life in the world as it stands, that watching it seems almost unhealthy. It makes me feel dirty afterward, like a movie version of ‘extreme’-flavored Doritos.
The Shawshank Redemption is Steel Magnolias for men.
Slapshot is Steel Magnolias for men.
No, Slapshot is Bull Durham for people who really like sports.
Steel Magnolias is Pulp Fiction for women, with more hairstyling and less shooting.
I thought Steel Magnolias was the Steel Magnolias for men. On the other hand, Charles Pierce was here!
I remember hearing, or maybe reading, someplace that The Shawshank Redemption is a movie that has some near-magical power to draw television viewers in, so that if they happen across it they will sit and watch it to the end, no matter how many times they’ve seen it. According to whatever source I encountered, in Britain the BBC has been known to employ The Shawshank Redemption for just such a purpose, and schedule it for broadcast immediately before the first episode of some new series for which they want to build an audience.
The little known secret is that it shoots a form of crack into your eyeballs creating immediate addiction.
Seriously, its a good movie, but a good movie I have to hate because so many (including, of course, dipshits) think it is the greatest ever. The same goes for “Fight Club” (book and movie).
I wonder what the top movie would be if ratings were like/dislike instead of starred.
Skimmed through that linked discussion of Shawshank as #1, and I was disappointed to see that the reviewer hadn’t looked through the demographic voting data on the IMDb page. Voters on IMDB are decidedly NOT a cross section of the US pop. It’s a more useful and interesting question to think through why that movie resonates with men age 18-29, the group that constitutes just under HALF of the entire voting population for the flick (and similarly for IMDb in general).
Indeed. I wanted to say something similar. The IMB Top 250 are movies that appeal to young men.
Shawshank is also currently number one in the women-only poll on IMDB as well.
http://www.imdb.com/chart/female
The number one movie on the male-only poll is The Godfather. Shawshank is number 2.
http://www.imdb.com/chart/male
Comment awaiting moderation
Old people love the shit out of Shawshank. Despite the prison rape, it for some reason delivers everything that’s been missing in film for the last 25 years, and does it in a way that a more obvious, gimmicky, fake-nostalgic, and postmodern movie like Forrest Gump doesn’t. But also, it’s a very satisfying, well-paced, well-constructed mainstream movie, kind of the best representative of a kind of movie, and those tend to do well on infinite t.v. re-viewings (see Die Hard).
Despite the prison rape? My grandpa cheered at that!
What?
A Few Good Men occupies a similar place for me. If I’m channel surfing and happen on to it, I can keep watching to the end no matter how many times I’ve seen it before.
I agree with hv, watchability is a funny thing.
Ah, internet polls. Aren’t those the wonders that consistently reveal that Atlas Shrugged is the greatest novel ever, ever, ever? I can only hope the movie version polls equally well.
I have the same watchability phenomenon working with Ben-Hur, which is how I’ve wasted many entire afternoons.
Goats and Jehovah.
To me, the interesting thing is not how out-of-place Shawshank would seem to be at number one, but at how traditional the rest of the list is. If one were to exclude movies made within the last three years (since newer movies invariably start off high on the IMDB list then settle in at an appropriate place), the IMDB top ten would be: Shawshank, Godfather, Godfather II, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Pulp Fiction, Schindler’s List, 12 Angry Men, One Flew Over The Cuckcoo’s Nest, and Empire Strikes Back. Excluding Shawshank, that’s an unsurprising list coming from a critic or a fan of the movies, showing a real appreciation of both older and newer movies and containing a healthy mix of genres. There’s also a foreign language film, Seven Samurai, sitting at #13 on the list (and it’s #11 once Inception and Dark Knight are removed from the list for not having had enough time to be fully rated). The issue isn’t whether enough people have seen the more classically top-10 movies that explains Shawshank’s presence; the rating system, as I understand it, doesn’t take into account the number of people rating it, and a movie like Once Upon a Time in the West can crack the top 20 with one-sixth the number of votes as Shawshank. Nor does the list necessarily reveal to me some demographic that is oversampled in the IMDB list, although in general I would say that romantic movies are underrepresented. It could just be that movie watchers really, really like this movie.
Or maybe that nobody hates it.
Although I would not put it on my personal list, SR is indeed mesmerizing. Glad to see on of my favorites, Seven Samurai, rank so high. Also mesmerizing and tremendously exciting.
“The Mist” is a better Frank Darabont film than “The Shawshank Redemption”.
I waste no time in justifying this assertion.
I like SH but wouldn’t call it the number one in a movies list. The Third Man or Ran for me, but maybe it’s a movie that holds up well across the board in all departments eg. story, filming, acting etc. while others are more narrowly excellent.
Ooooh ‘narrowly excellent’ sounds like a Jonah Goldberg excuse for right wing loons.
Watchable for whom, exactly? I detest all Frank Darabont movies. They are hellishly overlong, obvious, self-important . Who else could, or would, take a short story, fer cryin’ out loud, and make a two hour, twenty seven minute movie out of it? Makes Tarkovsky seem like Sam Fuller. Hell, Darabont’s work makes Warhol’s “Empire State Building” seem like Sam Fuller. Makes perfect sense he’s doing zombies now– the slowest moving monsters left, since the Mummy was already taken.