The well-known film is abetted through a touching score by Thomas Newman, the golden cinematography by Roger Deakins, and a third impressive character - Maine's unfair Shawshank State Prison (really the transformed, destined Mansfield Ohio Correctional Institution or State Reformatory).
Posters for the movie illustrate the healing, redemptive power of optimism along with the spiritual themes of freedom and resurrection, using the words: "Fear can hold you prisoner; Hope can set you no cost." Darabont's film is an allegorical tale, patiently told, (unfolding like a long-played, occasionally painstaking, persistent chess game) of friendship, patience, survival, hope, liberation, and eventual redemption and salvation when of the film's climax.
It was nominated for seven Oscars, which includes Best Picture, Best Actor (Morgan Freeman), Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Sound - but it failed to win a single Oscar. And the director of film failed to obtain a nomination for them! In the identical year as Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, and Speed, they got all the attention. Only by way of positive word-of-mouth (following cable TV and broadcast airings, and then video releases) the film did well - even though its original reception in the box-office was lukewarm. The film was the precursor for one more inspirational and well-liked film (along with a comparable adaptation of a Stephen King story by director/writer Frank Darabont) - The Green Mile (1999).
