15年前的《肖申克的救赎》(The Shawshank Redemption)曾被人视为“男人必看的励志影片”。

 

    《胡润百富》主编胡文杰女士在《向2008年致敬》一文中如此评价这部电影：

 

    “在这部电影里，自由和希望，光明和力量从未如此深刻地冲击着我们的价值观，影片所呈现的问题是，在信仰缺失的年代和底线被践踏的恶劣环境里，是希望上帝出现，还是自我救赎？之所以重提这部经典的老片，或许是为了再一次重温影片中那些温暖得如阳光般照亮人类心灵的救赎。”

 

    身处2009年4月份的我把这部老电影反反复复地看了多遍。很喜欢；有一种莫名的感动；就像一粒石子丢进沉寂干枯的心海里，涟漪层层，久久而不能去。

 

    欲罢不能，于是再一次细细地欣赏了一遍，并摘录部分台词于此，供日后慢慢品味。

 

By the power vested in me by the state of Maine, I hereby order you to serve two life sentences back-to-back, one for each of your victims. So be it!

 

Same old shit, different day.

 

You are convicted felons, that's why they've sent you to me. Rule number one: No blasphemy, I'll not have the Lord's name taken in vain in my prison. The other rules you'll figure out as you go along.

 

You eat when we say you eat. You shit when we say you shit, and piss when we say you piss. You got that, you maggot-dick motherfucker?

 

I believe in two things: discipline and the Bible. Here you'll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord, your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank.

 

The first night is the toughest. No doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born, skin burning and half-blind from that delousing shit. And when they put you in the cell, and those bars slam home, that's when you know it's for real. Old life blown away in the blink of an eye, nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it. Most new fish come close to madness the first night, somebody always breaks down crying. Happens every time. The only question is, who is going to be?

 

If I hear so much as a mouse fart in here tonight, I swear by God and Jesus, you'll all visit the infirmary, every last motherfucker in here.

 

Bull queers take by force, that's all they want or understand. If I were you, I'd grow eyes in the back of my head.

 

Risk goes up, price goes up.

 

Things went to like that for a while. Prison life consists of routine, and then more routine. Every so often, Andy would show up with fresh bruses, the Sisters kept at him, sometimes he was able to fight them off, sometimes not, and that's how it went for Andy. That was his routine. I do believe those first two years were the worst for him, and I also believe that if things had gone on that way, this place would have got the best of him.

 

A man working outdoors feels more like a man if he can have a bottle of suds. That's only my opionion.

 

And that's how it came to pass that on the second to last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the factory in the spring of "49" wound up sitting in a row at 10:00 in the morning drinking ice cold beer, courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison. We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders, and feel like free men. We could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the lords of all creation.

 

Chess. Now there's a game of kings. Civilised. Strategic.

 

All right, but you should know that sudden, serious brain injury causes the victim to bite down hard. In fact, I hear the bite reflect is so strong they have to pry the victim's jaws open with a crewbar.

 

Time's up, Bogs.

 

I'm the light of the world, ye that followeth me shall have the light of life.

 

Men should have a skill.

 

I can't say I approve of this, but I suppose exceptions can be made.

 

Salvation lies within.

 

Brooks ain't no bug. He's just institutionalised. The man has been here fifty years, 50 years! This is all he knows. In here he is an important man, an educated man. Outside he is nothing, just a used up com with artheritis in both hands, probably couldn't get a library card if he tried. You know what I'm trying to say? But I tell you these walls are funny. First you hate them, then you get used to them,. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That is "institutionalised". They sent you here for life, that is exactly what they take, parts that counts, anyway.

 

Brooks was here, so was Red.

 

I have noo idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about, truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think it was something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices scared,higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was like a beautiful bird flapped into our drab cage and make those walls dissolve away. And for the brieffest of moments every last man at Shawshank felt free.

 

Prison time is slow time, so you do what you can to keep going. Some fellows collect stamps, others built matchstick houses, Andy built a library. Now he needed a new project. Tommy was it. It was the same reason he spent years shaping and polishing those rocks. The same reason he hung his fantasy girls on the wall. In prison a man will do most anything to keep his mind occupied.

 

It (bad luck) floats around. It's got to land on somebody. It was my turn, that's all. I was in the path of the ternado. I just didn't expect the storm would last as long as it was.

 

On day, when I get a long, white beard and two or three marbles rolling around upstairs, they'' let me out.

 

- I tell you where I'd go. Zihuatanejo. It's in Mexico, a little place on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They said it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory. Open up a little hotel right on the beach, buy some worthless old boat and fix it up new, take my guests out charter fishing. In a place like that, I could use a man that knows how to get things.

- I don't think I could make it on the outside, Andy. I been in here most of my life. I'm an institutional man now, just like Brooks was.

- Well, you underestimate yourself.

- I don't think so. In here I'm the guy who can get things for you sure, but outside all you need is the Yellow Pages. Hell, I wouldn't know where to begin. Pacific Ocean? shit, scare me to death, something that big.

- Not me. I didn't shoot my wife, and I didn't shoot her lover. Whatever mistakes I made, I've paid for them and then some. That hotel, that boat, I don't think that's too much to ask.

- I think you shouldn't be doing this to yourself. This is just shitty pipe dreams. I mean Mexico is away down there and you're in here, and that's the way it is.

- yeah, right, that's the way it is. It's down there and I'm in here. I guess it comes down to a simple choice: get busy living, or get busy dying.

 

Get my stuff down to the laundry, and shine my shoes, I want them looking like mirrors.

 

I've had some long nights in the stir, alone in the dark with nothing but your thoughts, time can draw out like a blade. That was the longest night of my life.

 

in 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank Prison. All they found was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock hammer, damn near worn down to the . . I remember thinking it would take a man 600 years to tunnel through the wall with it, old Andy did it in less then 20 years!

 

Oh, Andy loved geology. I imagine it appealed to his maticulous nature. An ice age here, millions years of mountain building there. Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes, really, pressure, and time, that and a big goddamn poster. Like I said in prison, a man will do anything to keep his mind occupied. It turns out Andy's favorate hobby ws toting his wall out into the exercise yard a handful at a time. I guess after Tommy was killed, Andy decided he'd been here long enough.

 

Andy crawled to freedom through 500 yards of shit-smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want to. Five hundred yards that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.

 

Byron Hadley? You have the right to remain silent. If you give up this right, anything you say can be held against you in court.

 

When I picture him heading south in his own car with the top down, it always makes me laugh. Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. Andy Dufresne, headed for the Pacific.

 

I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to block them up does rejoice. But still the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they are gone. I guess I just miss my friend.

 

Rehabilitation? To me it just a made up word, a politican's word so that young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie and have a job... There is not a day goes by I don't feel regret, not because I'm in here or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then, a young stupid kid who committed that terrible crime, I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him. Tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid is long gone, and this old man is all that's left. I got to live with that. Rehabilitation? It's just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your forms, sonny, and stop wasting my time, because I tell you the truth I don't give a shit.

 

Forty years I've been asking permission to piss. I can't squeeze a drop without say so. There is a harsh truth to face. No way I'm going to make it on the outside. All I do anytime is think of ways to break my parole so maybe they'd sent me back.

 

Terrible thing, to live in fear... All I want is to be back where things make sense, where I won't have to be afraid all the time. Only one thing stops me, a promise I made to Andy.

 

Dear Red, if you're reading this, you've gotten out, and if you've come this far, maybe you'd come a bit further. You remember the name of the town, don't you? I could use a good man to help me get my project on wheels. I'll keep an eye out for you, and the chessboard is ready. Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I'll be hoping this letter finds you, and finds you well.

 

I find I'm so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel. A free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. 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.

 

(完）