THELMA & LOUISE

(May 1991, U.S.)

By the end of the 1980s, I wasn't quite sure what to make of director Ridley Scott. It seemed that the science fiction mastery of ALIEN (1979) and BLADE RUNNER (1982) had been traded in for the New York City copy thriller of SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME (1987) and BLACK RAIN (1989) by the end of the decade. By 1991, a movie poster with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis with a tag line that said, Someone said get a life...so they did, only promoted whatever confusion I was feeling about the man. What sort of female road movie would Ridley Scott make, was the question that burned in my brain, and I had to find out.

THELMA & LOUISE starts out lighthearted enough, with two best friends Louise Sawyer (Sarandon) and Thelma Dickinson (Davis) setting out for a weekend road trip in their 1966 Ford Thunderbird to a friend's cabin to take a break from their mundane lives in Arkansas. Thelma is rather ditzy and married to a dominating and disrespectful man, while Louise is sharp and constantly on the defense, as she immediately rebukes the advances of a flirtatious stranger like Harlan in a roadhouse bar. Before we know it, any lightheartedness the film started with has turned to anger and violence when Louise unexpected kills Harlan in a deserted parking lot after he attempts to rape Thelma. Now fugitives from the law, Thelma and Louise have to figure out how to handle the situation. Going to the police is not an option because Louise recognizes that even in the 90s, we don't live in a world where anyone will believe Thelma's claim of attempted rape when she was seen by many dancing and appearing to have a good time with Harlan in the bar.

On the run now, headed for Mexico, and investigated by Detective Hal Slocumb (played by Harvey Keitel), Louise refuses to go through Texas to get there, and won't explain why, though we in the audience who are capable of intelligent thought suspect why. As time and the circumstances of their trip across the states progresses, the so-called mundane, everyday women of Arkansas are slowly becoming the tough, resourceful and resilient women of power and independence, fighting for not only their freedom, but their feminine right to fight for themselves in a man's world. Still, even in these circumstances, there's room for continued flirtation and the pursuit of lust; i.e., enter a young and unknown Brad Pitt as hitchhiker J.D. Thelma experiences sex (great sex, actually) with someone other than her asshole husband for the first time, but her ditzyness returns the next morning when she stupidly leaves J.D. alone with all the money she and Louise have to start their lives over in Mexico.

Broke, alone and afraid now, the two divas of the highway must now turn to armed robbery to survive, and it would seem they have a knack for it. By the time our two heroines are cornered at the edge of the Grand Canyon, we've had more than two hours to turn our sympathies for these two women into genuine concern and respect for what they've not only experienced, but who they once were and who they are now. There's no going back, no going to jail and no going forward. We know what the final solution is and we may actually find ourselves smiling as they "keep going", kiss each other for the last time, and drive off the cliff to their ultimate destiny. Like taxes, death was surely the only thing certain for two women like Thelma & Louise who would refuse to compromise themselves and their freedoms of choice for anybody or any reason. There's actually something almost quite visually beautiful with that final image of their car sailing across the Grand Canyon and then freeze-framed...

Today we live in the "Trump" world that has produced the #MeToo movement and a tremendous spike in feminism and recognition for the respect that women deserve. But we cannot ignore the strong feminist overtones of THELMA & LOUISE twenty-eight years ago. Even Time magazine recognized the nerve the film struck with audiences with this 1991 cover photo...

Ridley Scott, a man, recognizes how to express an uncompromising and unapologetic validation of Thelma & Louise's experiences on the road while trying to outrun the law (all men, by the way) for the revenge crime of killing a would-be male rapist. Even before all the trouble has started, the men these two women must deal with, whether in marriage or as a waitress in a restaurant, are for the most part, stereotypical and chauvinistic. But even as all of this is valid, we're forced to argue the point that all of this has occurred because Louise is an angry woman who has looses her reason under pressure when she chooses to murder Harlan in cold blood, rather than perhaps just wound him, instead. Did Harlan deserve to die, even for attempted rape? Thelma loses her reason when she chooses to rob a convenience store to get money. Was that warranted? Both of them loose their reason together when they blow up a fuel truck to smithereens in order to teach the pig who's driving it a lesson for being so disrespectful and disgusting toward them. Was that warranted? These are debates that I'm not willing to participate in because the point of my blog is film interpretation and nothing else. They do exist, nonetheless.

Regardless of all its feminist controversies, THELMA & LOUISE remains an cinematic achievement about women during a period when stronger women's roles in the movies were becoming more evident, sharing screen stardom with others like Sigourney Weaver in ALIENS (1986), Jodie Foster in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and Linda Hamilton in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (both 1991). And for Ridley Scott, the film remains a welcomed change of cinematic pace that would eventually lead to other great works like GLADIATOR (2000) and BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001), just to name a couple.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Detective Hal Slocumb: "I don't wanna get two personal, but do you have a good relationship with your wife?"
Darryl Dickinson: "I...I love Thelma."
Hal: "I don't intend anything by that, sir. Just a question I have to ask. Are you close with her?"
Darryl: "Yeah...I guess. I mean, I'm about as close as I can be to a nutcase like that!"