The Cinema of Frank Darabont

Picture a man, interested in a career in the movies, who finally gets the chance to write and direct a feature film for the first time and after he does so that movie is popularly hailed one of the greatest ever made. This man you are picturing -likely it’s Orson Welles.

But it is also Frank Darabont.

Frank Darabont, the working-class son of Hungarian immigrants (he himself was born in a refugee camp) who fell in love with the movies upon seeing George Lucas’s THX 1138, wasn’t the total stranger to the medium that Welles had been when he directed his first film and masterpiece The Shawshank Redemption in 1994, but he was still a guy who came relatively out of nowhere. His credits up to that point consisted of co-writing three horror films: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, the 1988 remake of The Blob, and The Fly II as well as several episodes of the TV series Tales from the Crypt and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. He made his official directing debut with a low-budget TV movie called Buried Alive in 1990 that was poorly received and quickly forgotten. He may have had a foot in the industry but he was no one anybody suspected would suddenly helm an era-defining movie.

But a $5000 purchase of the rights to a Stephen King novella when he was still starting out and a hell of a lot of vision in the script it spawned snowballed into a 25 million dollar budget from Castle Rock Entertainment (itself named after a Stephen King setting), and the rest is popular movie history. The Shawshank Redemption premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and was succeeded by a wide release to immense critical acclaim but faint commercial success. Even though it scored seven Academy Award nominations (winning none, being largely swept away by Forrest Gump), it ended its run a box-office bomb. But like It’s a Wonderful Life -fitting, given Shawshank’s Capra-esque overtures- in the years that followed, on home video and especially cable TV reruns it gained an incredible following and renewed appreciation, so that by the time of Darabont’s next film, The Green Mile in 1999, he was already vindicated. To this day, The Shawshank Redemption is a widely beloved parable of hope, King’s favourite of all the adaptations of his work, and it frequently shows up on lists of the greatest movies of all time.

It would be the envy of many a filmmaker of broader renown and yet Darabont is never spoken of as one of the great directors. This movie is indisputably one of the landmark films of the 1990s, but is Frank Darabont’s name as prevalent as the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher, Wes Anderson, or Paul Thomas Anderson who all broke through in that era as well? Why has he fallen into relative obscurity? Does he deserve it? Obviously, by the fact that I’m writing this, my argument is ‘no’, but both his career and his filmmaking is worth taking a serious look at I think. He’s more than just a guy who got lucky on a few Stephen King adaptations.

That said, the Stephen King of it all is likely a major reason for his slump in popularity and it isn’t really anyone’s fault but his own. Following up a prison drama based on a King story with another prison drama based on a King story, no matter how good each is individually, is the kind of thing that would box one in as a filmmaker. Three of his four movies have been King adaptations which doesn’t really say much about one’s versatility as an artist. The thing is, Darabont does have versatility as an artist. There’s a great irony in that Darabont’s genre of choice as a writer and producer has been in horror, that he made his name on particularly two adaptations of stories by the “master of horror” King, yet neither of them was a horror movie. Only The Mist allowed the horror proclivities of King and Darabont to merge, and while good, it hasn’t had nearly the power of Shawshank or The Green Mile. Principally, it is remembered for its ending -an ending that Darabont, not King, is responsible for.

Darabont has strong storytelling instincts and a sharp eye for filmmaking, and perhaps if he worked a bit more consistently at his peak and especially if he cultivated a larger body of work he might have gotten serious recognition there. Unfortunately, his story as a filmmaker and seemingly his will to make movies in general ended  with the greatly protracted fallout from his involvement with The Walking Dead, a show he produced and developed through its first season (including directing the pilot episode), but was then fired due to an apparent mixture of things around the show’s budget and his relationship with AMC’s network executives; and his subsequent lawsuits over the next decade distracted him from other work and took a severe toll on him. The general direction of the industry can’t have helped either -it’s now not exactly friendly to a director of Darabont’s calibre or creative persuasion.

I have long wondered about what might have been had the Walking Dead drama not bogged him down, or even earlier had he gotten more opportunities to prove himself in diverse ways. Because I would argue that Darabont’s directorial credentials should not be overlooked, that in his comparative obscurity he had skills and a vision that show through in his work and aren’t easy qualities to replicate. He was a director who could conceive and execute powerful images that have become some of the most immortal in popular cinema history. And that he deserves to be studied and understood as one of the great American directors of the post-New Hollywood landscape.

He demonstrated a certain competence right off the bat with Buried Alive, something of a loose re-telling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial” with Tim Matheson, seemingly killed by his cheating wife Jennifer Jason Leigh and her lover William Atherton, coming back from the grave to exact revenge. It’s pulpy, and the script (not by Darabont) is nothing; but there is some decent suspense filmmaking to it in a few creative touches in smash-zooms or claustrophobic perspective shots. There’s no kind of budget for anything too substantive, but he works within the limitations, and while I wouldn’t say the great filmmaker is tangible in it -retrospectively you can see some of the roots of his later cultivated talents. There is a scene where Matheson emerges in the rain with flashing lightning around that is vaguely reminiscent of another character reaching freedom surrounded by mud and rain.

But yeah, let’s look at The Shawshank Redemption -and to be fair, it should be noted that by Darabont’s admission, Castle Rock President Rob Reiner (who had directed King adaptations Stand By Me and Misery and had been initially pegged to helm Shawshank off of Darabont’s script), shepherded the younger director through the film’s production. Creative control still rested with Darabont, but a lot of choices were no doubt motivated by what he learned on the job from Reiner. And when it comes to the power of Darabont’s direction, a lot of it is conveyed through the camera, though subtly. In his work with cinematographer legend Roger Deakins, he finds dynamics, atmosphere, and storytelling depth through where and how the camera is moved. Little things like the pan-in on Andy as the Sisters corner him to bring in a sense of uncommon urgency or the way that a couple of the dinner conversations are made more dynamic through parallel push-ins with each reverse shot.

Yet there are plenty of very interesting and deliberate choices with the camera as well. The push-in that ends Andy’s trial as the weight of two life sentences hits himself against a perspective tracking shot of Red entering the parole room -the characters being linked before they’ve even met. There’s the one crane shot of the movie over the prisoners in the yard as they listen to Andy’s music -a very sharp image conveying the magnitude of Andy’s action and the difference that it makes. This beat features the only cross-fade in the movie as well, in tune with Red’s poetic description of the music’s impact. It evokes a kind of soulful yearning for the outside world; a fleeting ray of freedom likewise expressed in the aftermath of Andy’s deal with Hadley in a oner over the prisoners sitting on the roof sipping beers at dusk, the symbols of their oppression -the guards- notably dwarfed in the background. A scene like this I can image Darabont simply visualizing what King had written directly, yet that can’t necessarily be applied to the scene before where Hadley is manhandling Andy, threatening to throw him from the roof and an overhead shot of immediate danger gradually moves in as Andy reveals his usefulness -and Hadley’s power is transferred to him by the camera settling at his vantage point. I appreciate too the important occasions where the camera’s lateral movement conceals something -the sexual assault for good taste, Andy’s empty cell for suspense. And Darabont and Deakins really know when to use the camera to draw power out of Morgan Freeman’s performance through merely letting him consume the frame, both at his final parole hearing and most affectingly in the hay field as he reads the last notes of Andy’s letter.

This instance is a triumph of composition as well, the warmth of the environment around him lining up with the hope that has now encompassed him -cultivated by Andy. It only increases with the remaining time in the movie until that last shot of the pair reuniting on the beach framed at a great distance against the endless ocean, the most dramatic symbol of their freedom and Red’s redemption. The movie is full of these meaningful images. Consider the particular grimness of both Andy’s cell and the prison floor generally on his first night, dark and rusty and unbearably dismal -a harshness that dissipates over the time as Andy risks becoming ‘used to’ the bars. Or the isolating long shot of Andy after he’s released from solitary, the colours overcast and the prison yard empty as he sits against a wall. This is of course in direct contrast to his first release from solitary where he is joined by his enthusiastic friends at dinner. 

Darabont seems to have a love for such parallel motifs, the starkest being the comparative images of Brooks and Red on their respective releases -Brooks framed small in a long take in the imposing shadow of Shawshank cold and alone as he leaves his only home; Red on the other hand is seen from the alternate vantage point, a medium shot with the open skies behind him indicating that unlike Brooks he won’t forever be a prisoner. Brooks and Red are also linked in the shots of them on the bus leaving Shawshank, virtually identical -but there’s a coda to Red’s where he looks longingly out the window of the next bus he’s on, ready to grasp that freedom. Returning to Brooks’s release, widely regarded as the most emotionally devastating beat of the movie, it would not have any of its power if Darabont wasn’t so good at conveying his depression and isolation visually -the long shots dwarfing him on the street corner as he finds himself confused by the modern world and on the lonely park bench or against the shabby, unfriendly apartment -its own new cell- with high ceilings.

There are a lot of strong lighting choices, or lack thereof -the darkness that enshrouds Andy on both his first and last nights in Shawshank, the most intense points in his sentence. By contrast, the scene of Tommy’s untimely death is under very hot lighting, as though it were an interrogation, creating a sense of deserved tension. But of course no discussion of the conjuring of images on this movie can complete without its signature iconic moment: Andy’s escape. The lightning frames him majestically (this sequence is of course at the root of a lot of the film’s Christian readings), the rain pouring down on his skin in sign of his liberation, and an overhead shot not commonly seen in the movie to frame with omniscience this pivotal triumph. A lot of thought went into how to illustrate this moment, the catharsis of the entire premise and Darabont’s execution of it is not simply competent, it is a masterclass.

The same might be said of the signature shot from his next movie, The Green Mile -at least the shot that has had the most staying power. As part of his final request before his execution, John Coffey is shown a movie, Top Hat with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; it so moves and transfixes him, illuminating Michael Clarke Duncan's head by the projector booth in a manner akin to a halo, perhaps an obvious but beautiful reinforcement of the heavy Christ allegory surrounding this character as well. Darabont was understandably hesitant initially to make The Green Mile his follow-up movie. But he accepted the typifying effect it would have on his career upon reading the book, which he found immensely powerful. And I wonder if this shot was in his mind at the time he conceived his vision of the movie.

His direction on this film is a little more stark and less dynamic than Shawshank -the absence of Deakins is strongly felt. There are fewer fluid compositions, more direct cutting, the filmmaking just in general feels a touch more conservative as Darabont relies more heavily on the story itself. And yet it is not fundamentally uninteresting, serving the needs of the space and the actors, and Darabont knows the power of the visual medium. Life and death, light and dark are notable motifs of the story, and the prison Darabont chose to shoot in looks like a mausoleum with its cavernous brick walls, lime green floor (the Green Mile) and somewhat sickly atmosphere. Chief Guard Paul Edgecombe makes the comparison to an urgent care ward and the place does resemble that in a Victorian sense. The mundane horror about the place is captured well, there's a pervasive dimness to the execution room. While Shawshank wreaked of solemn, clinical grey bleakness, Death Row is more morbidly decrepit -an architectural corpse; and at both the beginning and end, Darabont links it to the care home that the centenarian Paul lives in in the present, very slowly walking his own green mile.

Though the film is a touch more prosaic, Darabont continues to make evocative choices, such as his refrain from showing John's face until it is time for him to speak. How he shoots the first flashback to the crime with urgency from the perspective of the father and then the second in a hazy, discomforting slow-frame rate when revealing Wild Bill as the true monster, complete with symbols of innocence violated. There is some shrewd framing of the power dynamics between Paul and Percy when the two are in some confrontation -Paul always shot in towering authority or in one great long shot after the first execution a trick of perspective sees Paul buffeted by a large arch, Percy a much smaller one. He is after all the smaller man, both in stature and character. Nonetheless, Percy is treated with a fair bit of visual dramatic tension. The juxtaposition of his humiliation with Del's laughing presages his sudden cruel killing of Mr. Jingles the mouse, and then once John has healed him, Darabont curiously follows Paul and Brutus to Percy with the news by way of a long-tracking shot off the green mile as though a reference to Mr. Jingles's journey out of death back to life. This is contrasted by these same guards escorting Del the other way down the mile, conveyed via dour overhead shot that fades into the overbearing horror of the execution room. Darabont is more interested in overheads this time and their omniscient function. Consider the judgement of those juxtaposed overheads of the crowd fighting to escape the botched execution with Wild Bill's exhilaration behind his cell.

Of course the technique is employed most notably after every usage of John’s healing magic, as a locust-like expulsion releases into the air above before dissipating. In these there’s an implied kind of divinity -the hurt or the evil vanquished before it can reach heaven. But the purpose of the angle is more likely just to illustrate the mystery of this occurrence, removing natural character subjectivity from the camera to suggest the unknowable. We see other versions of this in the dolly zoom effect the first time John performs his miracle on Paul, in the pan across the guards as they all witness him bring Mr. Jingles back to life, and in every bursting bright light, especially the shower that rains down behind Paul at John’s execution, representing the last spark of life leaving the gentle giant. Light plays an important role; it emphasizes John’s sweat throughout the movie -as much as anything a sign of the pain he constantly feels from everybody, and of course that backlighting on the chair as John sits in it, giving him the appearance of a Renaissance fresco of an angel or Jesus himself. And then of course it is gone entirely in that post-execution close-up of John’s black eyes. The story’s pronounced themes on faith and John’s role as a Christ character can be metaphorically exhausting at times, but Darabont doesn’t choose obvious ways to portray it. And whether it was in the book or not, its execution -to pardon the term- is what matters most, and its where Darabont’s keen instincts come to the fore again.

Also I appreciate that push-in on Paul while he pees. Funny and cathartic in good measure.

Darabont’s directing got more ambitious on his next movie, and really the interesting one. His one major bomb in both its box office and reputation, The Majestic is frequently forgotten in his short career -that oddity that was his one feature not based on a Stephen King book. And yet this film perhaps says more about his instincts and preferences as a director than any other -it must, it’s also his only film he didn’t write himself. Perhaps that is a fault of the movie, which does lack the elegance of his scripts, but in other ways it fits him like a glove. The movie is drenched in old Hollywood sentiment, a fairly blatant ode to Frank Capra and his particular style of American optimism. It is brighter and more playful than either of his previous films, beginning in a very bright and rosy 1950s Hollywood that becomes a very wholesome 1950s small town as his protagonist Peter Appleton, a screenwriter, loses his memory and winds up in a little town where he is mistaken for a beloved local believed lost in the war. Capra’s approach to this movie is very aesthetic -he delights in the lush romantic scenes between Peter and Adele, the girlfriend of this missing Luke Trimble -particularly one golden scene at a lighthouse bathed in saturation it almost looks too good to be true. But unlike in his past movies, this time it is true, it is earnest -and the movie got a lot of criticism for that.

But I rather like this version of Darabont, whose heart can be felt on every frame and who uses visual language to heighten its effect. The way he casts a kind of lamplight warmth over a few critical scenes between Peter and Harry, the man who thinks he is his father. There are so many beautiful details that sell Darabont’s unbelievable vision -shimmering water reflected by a shimmering car, a swinging lamplight bringing Peter in and out of the dark just as his identity is about to change, the cross-fade to a tracking shot through a war bunker as Peter reads a letter by Luke, and of course a couple moments that sweetly recall Shawshank: a bus ride in which Peter is framed exactly like Red, and a long-shot on a beach as Peter walks with James Whitmore’s character. I love the stark lighting in Peter’s evening conversation with sceptic Bob, and I love the giant desk that tiny HUAC commissioner Bob Balaban sits behind -Darabont’s feelings on the Red Scare made manifest.

Most of all though, Darabont expresses his love of cinema through the movie. There’s certainly cynicism in things like those faceless studio executives. But early on he sets out with a really sentimental image of the romance of movie theatres and the movie-going experience through a tracking shot along the red carpet and through to the concession at the classic Chinese theatre, later paralleled by the titular Majestic, which Darabont treats with nothing but the same reverence as Harry. There’s a cutesy montage of the refurbishment process (juxtaposed with a police investigation), and lovely head-on shots from within of audiences enraptured. When open again, Darabont showcases its elaborate old-school glamourous marquee in exquisite detail, casts the theatre against a crisp blue backdrop, and features a moment of Peter and Adele’s romantic silhouettes framed in front of, of all things, a screening of The Day the Earth Stood Still (a personal favourite of Darabont’s). There’s even a two decades early invocation of the AMC ad as one character says “in a place like this the magic is all around you.” Darabont has fun with adopted styles -the likeness of a glossy Gone With the Wind backdrop over the lighthouse scene, the recreation of a Rudolph Valentino-esque adventure flick. And of course a lot of Capra. Peter finds himself beloved by the townsfolk constantly surrounding him -a diner scene that resembles It’s a Wonderful Life (that shrewdly also features a character bearing a resemblance to Homer from The Best Years of Our Lives). Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is also evoked, and most emphatically Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in Peter’s righteous ‘American values’ stance towards HUAC -the beat of the movie that does really fall apart. But I think in spite of this, The Majestic is a strong showcase of Darabont’s love of this form, both in its substance and his tack in presenting it. A zenith of a certain kind of filmmaking grandeur for him that doesn’t deserve to be dismissed.

However, it is a movie that makes the choice of his next film so stunning, because you could not find a more starkly different movie from The Majestic -in both sentiment and statement- than The Mist. Maybe it was the poor reception to The Majestic, the immensity of its failure (it had the bad luck to open the same weekend as the first Lord of the Rings movie), or perhaps more likely it was the broader disenchantment of the Bush era, but something effected Darabont’s attitude as he returned to the first Stephen King story he ever had the impetus of making -one of survival, paranoia, and the bitterness of humanity.

The Mist is notably shot very differently from Darabont’s other movies, employing documentary-style techniques to the usual pans and camera movements, creating more a sense of immediacy and urgency, as well as critically an atmosphere of claustrophobia. It is set up well when we first arrive at the supermarket, moving from our protagonist David through the various people at check-out. From a filmmaking perspective, it’s a fascinating change in the process for Darabont, who is obliged to make the blocking of his actors more precise through long takes. But he is able to make good use of the format for subtle tension. That is where the horror really comes from -the people forced into a desperate situation and what they are capable of in that context.  In particular, deliberate framing of Mrs. Carmody tells a narrative of her evolving extremism and its effect on the survivors. She becomes more and more in focus the more converts she attains, claustrophobic shots on her followers, isolating those on her detractors. Their mob mentality is emphasized too, especially in the haunting overhead tracking shot of their sacrifice of Jessop. In his Twilight Zone approach to the story, Darabont sees Mrs. Carmody as the true villain, heightening the symbolism of her proselytizing all the way up to her death and the dim crucifix pose of her body.

But as much as the dark side of humanity is a key thematic point, The Mist is still a monster story. And the effects aren’t very good on their own -the tentacles especially have aged poorly- but the scene where the giant bugs attack through the window is executed with great intensity of controlled chaos. This is Darabont’s only true horror movie as director after getting his start as a writer in the genre, and he makes good use of his understanding of its tenets. The Mist itself is a great source of terror, Darabont gets a lot of mileage out of its opaque mystery. The first woman to leave enters the Mist and just vanishes entirely in disturbing illustration of its unknowable quality -more-so highlighted when the group led by Brent walks out into it, the camera positioned low following their legs into the cloudy white nothingness. Darabont recognizes the power of the unknown and does an apt job of keeping these monsters largely from our perception. Additionally when it comes to those discovered corpses, Darabont knows that the only thing scarier than people caught in a web of giant spiders is if those people’s bodies were to burst open, revealing a flood of more spiders.

All of this in a movie that feels distinctly modern -it is Darabont’s only movie set in the present day that vividly captures the air of the Bush era. Both before and during the crisis there is a lot of imagery reminiscent of the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, and the mix of attitudes is indicative of that period’s high calibre of divisive paranoia. But the dim effect of Bush’s America is perhaps most pronounced in the tenor of the notorious ending. Darabont made the choice of taking King’s mildly optimistic finale and twisting a knife in it. The world is immeasurably bleak  -that is what he communicates with the escape of David, his son and a few others, the remaining survivors in the supermarket watching in a chilling tracking shot through the window to a haunting dirge. The emptiness of the Mist gradually gives way to apocalyptic implications -a pan through a school bus of dead children, the sobering reveal of the death of David’s wife hammering in the hopelessness of the situation in powerful visual terms so that when the time comes it is understandable what the group decides to do. Still, the dawning of the idea is presented with exquisite attention to Thomas Jane’s performance of horror, then Darabont frames the mercy killing at a long shot from outside, removing the audience’s culpability. And when the tank dramatically comes through the Mist as it starts to dissipate, accompanied by a truck full of children making dark mockery of what David just did, the moment is allowed to sink in with the utmost power. The low camera on David filling the frame and moving upwards and skywards, removing his isolation through his scream of anguish, demonstrates the perfect emotional gravity of the hanging moment. The Mist is not as profound or captivating as Darabont’s prior movies, but its ending -though intentionally upsetting- is a properly superlative demonstration of his filmmaking prowess.

It was also of course great prep in its set-up and themes for The Walking Dead, which  successful for him or not, it marked his career’s return primarily to television. Between The Majestic and The Mist, he directed the pilot episode of  a canceled show called Raines and an episode on The Shield. Add on the pilot for The Walking Dead and three episodes of a short-lived show he subsequently created in 2013 called Mob City before ostensibly retiring. Until 2024, when after an eleven year silence it was announced he is going to be directing two episodes of the final season of Stranger Things, and his reasoning being that the show “has so much heart” demonstrates perhaps a return to that drive of optimism and hope, especially in these hard times, after a period of cynicism in his work. It also in a roundabout way brings him back yet again to Stephen King.

But as for film directing, it is eighteen years now since he last got behind the camera, and he is missed. Darabont is revered quite a lot as a writer. His original script for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was reportedly brilliant -though butchered for Kenneth Branagh’s film which Darabont disowned. Shawshank I might argue is the best script of the 90s, and it is indeed a big part of why that movie is so great, and Darabont has done script doctoring on everything from Eraser and Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla to Saving Private Ryan and Collateral. He also of course, coming from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, wrote the first draft of the fourth Indiana Jones movie -which Spielberg apparently loved but was nixed by Lucas. Speaking of Lucas, he was also at one time considered for writing the Star Wars prequels. To be courted by so many speaks to his great degree of talent and respect.

Yet he deserves his laurels as a filmmaker as much as anyone, if not more. Darabont is not an auteur but he is the most skilled of craftsman and that ought to be just as acclaimed. He knows very intricately what his scripts demand in execution. Frank Darabont is not an educated filmmaker, he didn’t go to school or train formally. His story is a bit of a rags to riches narrative and when you see his interviews, his comments and his principles, he strikingly still feels like that genuine working-class guy, not terribly common to see in the movie landscape. And it comes across in both the aspirational content of his movies, particularly Shawshank and The Majestic, as well as his style as a director that is very actor and tone-oriented, sparing in its use of flourish, though still extremely visually literate and intelligent. He’s the ordinary guy who got a golden ticket when he with almost no leverage insisted on directing Shawshank himself, and has maintained his perspective all the way through to his recent years.

I hope that in diving deep into his work I have conveyed a greater sense of his talents and distinct artistry. And given the cinematic scope of Stranger Things episodes lately (for good or bad), I am very excited to see what he does in that world and if it can potentially mean some even greater comeback. Frank Darabont really deserves it and we do too.

 

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