As it is, it might be the most essential film I have in my catalog, because it's the one I probably need the most.
While one of the most alluring qualities of the film is its ability to transcend its setting and become allegoric to virtually anything the viewer brings into it, I have the unique and unenviable gift of not being able to look at it through a different prism.
To truly understand what prison can do to the human soul, it's the same as understanding the nature of war or madness or even death. You have to be there. You have to find yourself in that world, live in it, live through it, and ultimately survive it.
My father once told me that my even though my grandfather was not a combat soldier, and to my knowledge, never saw the true horrors of World War II, he was never the same person when he came home from the Pacific when it was over. It was a transformative experience which came to be an intrinsic part of who he would be for the rest of his life.
I walked into the world of prison in September, 1998, and over the next 14 months and three days, that was my existence. The first two weeks were spent in a sensory-deprivation tank while the decision was made on where I would ultimately end up. Over that fortnight, I learned just how chaotic a life can become and what the loss of true freedom can do to a person. By the time they found a place for me to go, my life already had been threatened once by a fellow inmate and I'd been told by several others that it was very likely that I would never come out of wherever I'd end up.
For a 19-year-old young man who never imagined he could ever wind up in such a place, that was the moment where I know the most optimistic parts of me ceased to exist. It's a feeling that I truly believe is worth than death because unlike dying, which is the total cessation of all feelings and thoughts, feeling a side of yourself vanish from inside you is something I can barely describe, but has lasted with me to this day.
While I was there, the knowledge of what Shawshank represented to us was obvious and there were men I spent every day with who symbolized both Andy and Red simultaneously. People who clung desperately to their fragile hope in one breath that they could get out someday and regain the freedom they'd lost, and in the next, they dared not try to cling to it because every force around you wages a relentless attack on it every minute of every day.
You learn to sleep during the day and stay awake at night after a fellow inmate gets jumped and beaten with a padlock in a sock. You learn to not say anything to anyone with a badge because either the other inmates will look for underlying messages in it, or the guards will and either way, your life becomes exponentially more difficult. And you learn very quickly that you're no longer a human being.
You're just a number, a walking mechanism that is no longer allowed to retain any spark of humanity or individuality. You learn the only way to endure that sort of world is to take those pieces of you which you cannot stand to be without, hold them as far inside your heart as possible, and don't let anyone know they exist.
Emotions, hopes and dreams become contraband and if they're discovered, you'll never get them back.
We were never allowed to watch Shawshank because the one thing they didn't want us to have is a reason to think things can be better. But when I finally got home, it was the first thing I watched and I continue to every year, even though doing it brings back the visceral memories of what that existence was like. It all comes back to me in an instant, whether I want it to or not, but by the time the movie is over and I find myself breaking down and crying, it's not because I'm traumatized by the memories I have.
It's because in a lot of ways, I found my Zihuatanejo.
It's been 15 years, and in that time, despite all the obstacles I had to overcome, I'm still here and I managed to do what I'd been told repeatedly couldn't be done, because I managed to somehow hang onto a little fragment of hope.
Instead of dying, I got busy living. Now I just need to be okay with that.
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