The Shawshank Redemption from 1994 was one of my favorite movies and is easily considered a classic. In my opinion, it is the best prison movie made yet. The story was really emotionally powerful and was more than just a blatant story – it was more thought provoking and spiritual. It made you think deeply about hope and society, and almost every scene or speech in there had a meaningful lesson to it. For example, Red’s (Morgan Freeman’s) parole speech in the movie was a short scene, however his speech had a lot of meaning to it:

Red's Speech
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This also brings me to the acting, which was really powerful as well. For a movie of this genre, good acting was vital to make it successful. The camera work, lighting, and music in the movie was really well executed as well and still holds up to movies today. For example, during Andy’s escape, the lighting, sounds, and camera angles all added to the fear and tension the director wanted to convey during the scene:

Andy's Escape
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Also note the symbolism of freedom when he finally crawls out and takes his shirt off feeling the rain fall upon him. The movie genre was definitely drama as it was strongly centered around the characters and their acting as well as the overall lesson which was to always keep hope, hope should never die. And this lesson was beautifully explained by a line from Andy when Red stated that he feels hopeless that he may never get out of prison, and even if he does, he won’t know how to live outside of prison. Andy’s reply was “There are places in this world that aren’t made out of stone… there’s something inside… that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch. That’s yours… Hope.” Therefore, I would relate this movie to the ‘Hope Springs Eternal’ specific genre under drama on the TV tropes site, which states that hope lives on.