When we think of Christian films, a few may come to mind. There are classics, like The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Robe, and Ben Hur. More recently, there are Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ or Mary Magdelene, which I had discussed a few months ago. Another is the film Forgiven, with Kevin Sorbo, broadcast on Showtime, just today.
What if I told you, to misquote The Matrix’s Morpheus, that the greatest Christian film ever made might not be one of the above films? It may not even be a Christian film at all. Not intentionally, anyway.
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I appreciate the video essays found on the YouTube channel Logos Made Flesh. This channel is named after the first phrase in the first sentence of John 1:14: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
Logos Made Flesh belongs to Matthew Scott Miller. He seeks to expound on symbolism and explore the hidden meanings baked into films. When he considered the film Ex Machina, he invited people to watch his videos by using the term “Hidden meaning”—which is to say, not private meaning, but the symbols and codes hidden but to those holding the key. (Films I like to decode, myself, are those of Stanley Kubrick.)
Miller’s approach is important for believers in the New Testament. There, truths about God, the universe, ourselves, and each other, are plainly discussed—while, in the Old Testament, these same truths are still there, yet concealed. What is concealed in the one testament is revealed in the other and vice versa.
As Miller considers The Shawshank Redemption, he asks:
Can a film which is rated R, for a host of obscenities, produced by a cast and crew of non-believers and which paints the only Christian as an evil hypocrite, be the greatest Christian movie ever made?
Over 2.2 million voters on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) have made The Shawshank Redemption the #1 ranked film of all time. Miller says that while, “People are drawn to this film for its message of hope and enduring friendship,” few grasp its true meaning. What surpasses the themes of hope and friendship is how they come together in “a Christian act of redemption.”
Unlike most prison films, this movie seems to not concern itself with escape; instead, it focuses on life on the inside. No one who saw the film for the first time saw Andy Dufresne’s deliverance coming. There was no lead up or execution of a plan. Andy just disappeared.
We’re conditioned by the film to anticipate something other than an escape. As Miller says, “Contrary to every expectation, the prisoners fear release. While they hate the walls of the prison, they’re not seeking to escape from it, either.” Red (Morgan Freeman) put it this way: These walls are funny. First you hate ‘em; enough time passes, you get so you depend on ‘em.
For the prisoners of Shawshank, Brooks embodies this principal problem. For Brooks, says Miller, “freedom is [but] an exile to a world he doesn’t belong. So when he ultimately finds himself in that exile, empty and alone, he sees no other option but to hang himself.”
While this problem is seen in most of the prisoners, Andy is the exception; he is not a dependent. He doesn’t rely upon Shawshank’s walls for life and hope.
Andy, according to Miller, “subverts the prison’s dehumanizing system of rules and regulations, extending to his fellow prisons rare and extraordinary reminders of the outside world—cold beer after a hot day’s work, angelic music over the prison’s speaker’s, new books to educate men.”
In this setting, when proof of his innocence had vanished, Andy seemed to also succumb to the institutional pessimism of his fellow prisoners. But then the unexpected occurred.
For a moment, we were led to believe that Andy was dead. By all appearances, he was about to hang himself, as Brooks had done. Then, at the morning cell check, a guard exclaimed something one might hear at the realization of a resurrection: “Oh my holy God!”— a close paraphrase of what Thomas had said, when he confirmed that Jesus had risen from the dead (“My Lord and my God!,” he said).
We then learn that Andy is not dead. Instead of finding him expired in his tomb—I mean, in his cell—we find that Andy has actually escaped and is alive. Miller says about this event: “The film infuses Andy’s escape with the symbolism of new birth. It proceeds through a woman’s womb [the poster of Raquel Welch], and ends with him slipping head-first from the other end.”
This symbolism fits into what we had seen earlier in the film: prisoners entering Shawshank like newborns—naked and coated in white. With Andy, his escape signifies a born-again experience, as he becomes a new man, with a new identity and new wealth: what had been set aside for the corrupt warden.
While Andy’s escape is an echo of Jesus’ resurrection, The Shawshank Redemption goes a step further. It shows us why it matters.
What is meant by the redemption at Shawshank? Miller says the meaning is seen in Andy’s friend Red. It’s witnessed in Red’s ability to let go of his care of being a free man or not, in relation to the walls around him, because he had become free on the inside.
With Andy on the outside, Red suddenly “no longer cares whether he remains [within Shawshank] or goes, whether he lives or dies; the world outside no longer concerns him. Because Andy lives, he can face what the future holds.”
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A character in a movie is given new hope, because his friend, thought to be dead, had apparently been resurrected. Yet, Andy and Red are but characters in a film, whereas you and I are indeed real and our Savior—more real than the atoms in my fingers—is a resurrected friend of ours. Jesus is more of a friend to us than Andy was to Red, because he laid His life down for his friends.
Our friend Jesus entered the earthly prison we’re now in, joined us for a time, and died alongside other prisoners—but for a short time. He rose again to live again—for a very, very long time—and to give us New Hope. As the song says:
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, all fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living, just because He lives.
—Kevin Hutchins
*Please be advised that this blog represents the views, opinions and beliefs of the writer and does not necessarily reflect those of our church leadership or denominational affiliation.