I like watching the same movie over and over.
I don’t know why but watching the same movie is like visiting an old friend, which I don’t have myself but I assume this is what it would be like.
You watched a particular movie when you were a certain age and you thought about it for a while and forget it.
You think about that movie again years later for no reason. So you decide to watch it again for no particular reason.
Same as books and music but in somehow a little different ways, movies throw something to you that you are not prepared to catch at the first attempt.
Re-watching the same movie doesn’t mean that you would feel the same way about the movie.
Every time you re-watch a particular movie, you always see something you never noticed before. The characters, the synopsis, camera angles, sounds, costumes, background… etc give you totally different impressions/perspectives about the same movie. Because you are not the way now as you once were when you watched that movie for the first time. It is weird but wonderful.
That is why I keep watching same movies that I particularly like over time.
There are about 250 movies that I keep in my external hard drive and re-watch once in a while.
They are all different genre and different style. Some of them are from the same director and some of them are from the same actor\actress or the same writer.
I usually don’t go to the movie theater for a new movie unless there is something I particularly want to watch immediately. But that is usually rare to happen.
Anyway.
I watched The Shawshank Redemption (1994) again today.
When I first watched this film, I was maybe around 21 or 22.
I used to watch A LOT of movies when I was that age. Well, I never had enough money for social activities because I was always busy at school or work or being alone at home doing my own thing during my spare time.
Don’t feel bad for me. I was an extreme introvert. I was away from my parents and life in a big city was harder and depressing than I thought.
So I started picking up books and film. Some of the books I was reading then talked about Hitchcock’s and Kubric’s film in details with some pictures.
I don’t remember what book it was but I remember that I went to the local video shop to rent those movies right after that book, which I think I didn’t even finish. I remember I watched each of them at least 3 times during that week every night. My sister said I was crazy and she would cut off the cord if I didn’t turn it down. So I did turn it down and still watched without a problem.
One of them was The Shawshank Redemption. I was immediately into the story of these two men in prison.
I was thinking how a man can be sent to a prison that easy without thorough investigation and ruin his life. Even though Andy ended up being with a nice bunch of guys including Red in prison, what would have happened to Andy if Red and his friend didn’t pick him up and those animal-like gay gangs kept bothering him? Andy wouldn’t have been the way he was.
Since I was sent to a different school when I was 15, I had a similar feeling like Andy. It was just a school but how I saw it was a confined building that I knew no one and I still had to stay from 8.30am till 4.30pm every weekday. We wore school uniform and they had strict rules regarding behaviors and appearance such as hair, nail, accessories etc. I still remember I felt so awkward on my first day in front of the kids in the classroom and not sure where to sit.
Anyway.
After that, I watched this film from the beginning to the end about maybe 5–7 times at different age.
One thing I noticed when I was re-watching the same film is that I try to understand the character’s psychological perspectives no matter how good or bad they are in film and how that is somehow related to my perspectives in my life.
It is weird but every character in the film I keep watching has something I can totally relate to myself. (Or maybe I like them and that is why I keep re-watching them)
Andy’s life was completely destroyed by someone else’s action and the police and the lawyer’s unreliable investigation and decision. I terribly sorry for him. I am glad God didn’t throw him into a trash bin. There were good people and Andy met them. Red and Andy and other friends were able to call each other a friend over time through various situations and that helped everyone forget how miserable situation they were actually in.
Prison time is slow time. So you do what you can to keep it going.
Is it just in prison? I feel sometimes I am in a wide open prison and time goes so slow when I am not occupied by work. Many people don’t know what to do so they turn on their devices and surf social media or watch Netflix for hours. I do the same now.
Freedom. Yeah. Whatever. We live in a free country, don’t we?
God. But I am not free. I don’t know about other people. But I am not.
I follow scheduled routines everyday during the week and I get lost and confused during the weekend. And this is how a month goes and a year goes.
Unless you cut that tie and do something, you are in a wide open confinement.
But Andy did something. He was OK with his friends after having spent 19 years in prison. He could have kept doing that dirty money laundry for that pig and receiving rewards for the library and high school diploma program. It was already outstanding work nobody ever did.
A breaking point shook him to get out of there because he saw no hope there.
No matter how good a library was, it was just a library that has no leading point to anywhere else. That was it. No further thing.
The greedy pig wasn’t interested in the truth- Andy’s not guilty, of course, why should he? He was a good pet to take advantage of. And Andy was already a familiar member of that little society for 19 years.
Nobody could do anything about the truth.
The truth was covered with a merciless murder and buried forever.
That was what shook Andy. Red was too institutionalized that he couldn’t see what Andy was driving at.
I can’t even imagine how he made it through that filthy 500 yard. It is easy for us to say that he did and he got out. But I seriously doubt that in real life, there won’t be many people who would venture to do as Andy did. Prison is just a context but what matters is how you perceive it and take it.
I questioned in my head while watching this scene again.
Am I in the process of getting to the end of that 500 yard? Then, how far have I come? Am I going forward alright? Or am I going backward to go back to prison because it is damn hard to get to the end and it seems not even possible?
I watched the last scene carefully where Andy and Red met on the beach.
Red threw away his stuff to give a hug to his old friend. Andy hurried his step to see his old friend closely.
I cried silently for their union. Two men whose lives were taken away by the bigger power but eventually made it to that point where no one recognize them as a prisoner and they can be whatever they feel like.
Andy once said that Mexicans call the Pacific having no memory.
A place that has no memory. You are nobody, so you can be anybody.
No judgement. No string.
Empty and refill.
I like to be away because of the same reason. Roaming around where no one knows me. No one has a memory of me. You start as a clean plate. Even if it is just for a short period of time, it feels so good that I am nothing. I don’t understand the language and I am always wrong. So it gives me more rooms to step out of my shell and reach out to experiment. It is just so good.
Well, anyway.
The soundtrack and the names followed so I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
But I can imagine.
Probably they didn’t say a word. They just hugged for a while and smiled at each other while they were picking up Red’s stuff. Then, Andy took Red to his old boat and showed him what he was fixing.
Maybe they just sat on the boat and started talking slowly.
What would they be talking about?
Andy might be telling Red about a hostel he was running as he once said before and an old boat he was fixing.
In front of them, they were facing the endless Pacific blue ocean.
Red might be thinking that the Pacific ocean is more beautiful than he imagined and he is not so scared of the wide blue ocean as he thought he would be.
Both remain silent for a long time, thinking about how their lives has taken them up to that point. This will take a while.
Aimless Wanderlust 