Get your own Free Home Page
Directed by Ridley Scott
Starring Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen
USA, 1991
Rated R (violence, sex, profanity, adult themes)
Major elements of this film are revealed.
IMPULSES
In Thelma & Louise, two female friends set off into the sunset, leaving behind their sheltering homes and unknowingly entering a world of wolves. Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis), a housewife with a husband from hell named Darryl, has rarely been out of her little town and her untidy house, and is eager to run away with her waitress buddy Louise (Susan Sarandon). This film sparked one of the biggest movie controversies of the ‘90s, understandably. There is a fire that is rare in road movies that is in Thelma & Louise, and the usual road couples of man and woman are now altered to be two lovely ladies in the front of a green ’66 Thunderbird.
Thelma’s husband (Christopher McDonald) is a domineering, chauvinistic pig, and Thelma acts like his little girl, too afraid to ask him to go with her friend fishing for a day. She ends up going without asking him, leaving a note and his food in the microwave. Louise laughs at her friend’s timidity in the face of her spouse. Thelma, for the first time, is allowed to let her hair down, to go wild.
She pleads with her friend to stop at a honky-tonk bar for a drink, and is immediately being asked to dance by the sinister-looking Harlan (Timothy Carhart), the bar’s professional flirt. In the parking lot, he tries to rape Thelma, first serenading her, then becoming violent in a difficult scene to watch. Louise comes out, gun in hand, and the rape never occurs. But after Harlan spits out some misogynous slurs, Louise aims the gun at the potential rapist and shoots. What was supposed to be a pleasant vacation away from responsibility has plunged the women into crime. They are now outlaws, and the Thunderbird speeds away towards Mexico.
Thelma & Louise is great entertainment, but anyone who dismisses it as simply that does not take the film seriously and does not realize the power of the movie medium. Callie Khouri’s daring screenplay, which, with the performances of Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, is the real force driving the film, treads on a thin line between feminism and sexism, but I believe it is eventually able to transcend the shackles of both of these categories. Like its obvious influence, Bonnie and Clyde, Thelma & Louise does not justify the violence and the crime, and becomes a judgment and exploration of its audience.
My real problem with the movie is what can be perceived as its bigotry towards men. Most of the male characters (and they populate this film more than the women) are redneck stereotypes, and it’s sad that Khouri did not invest as much passionate nuance into all of her characters as she did with the marvelously and realistically scripted female antiheroes of the film. There are two good guys: Hal (Harvey Keitel), the detective who is investigating the girls but works as a protective father figure for them, and Jimmy (Michael Madsen), Louise’s sweet boyfriend who is unsure of how to express his love for her. Hal ends up being a rather condescending character; why he is so sympathetic towards the women’s plight is explained, but you kind of wonder whether a male criminal would get the same consideration.
The degenerate, evil men of this film come in the form of Harlan, the rapist; Darryl, the husband; a truck driver; and J. D. (Brad Pitt), a smooth-talking robber who seduces Thelma. Most of these characters are stick-figures with stutters and ugly attitudes towards women. Harlan is too briefly featured to be anything but a gross, unfeeling depiction of the male sex drive gone out-of-hand. Darryl is a one-noted creature who would rather watch his football game and laze around drinking beer than know the whereabouts of his mysteriously missing wife (in one hilarious scene, Thelma calls Darryl, and immediately knows he is aware of her crimes, and that the phone has been tapped by police, when he starts talking sweet to her.) He is the embodiment of the stupid, guzzling slob husband of the editorials and comic strips, but life just isn’t that simple. A lewd truck driver makes passes at Thelma and Louise on the road, and he is but a pawn for their revenge at the opposite sex. It is the mixture of the cool persuasion and suavity and, ultimately, villainy of J. D. that distinguishes the character from the others in the film.
What I don’t understand is why nearly all the supporting characters are so casually written when both Thelma and Louise have such life and verve. Also, what exactly is feminism? Webster says it is "a doctrine advocating social, political, and economic rights for women equal to those of men." If Thelma & Louise is indeed a feminist picture, why are the men shown as a crueler sex than women? If what Khouri is trying to express is the need for equality, why does she seem to mold the movie’s men into characters inferior to women? There is not one ‘bad’ woman character present. Of course, a balancing act where Khouri tries to appease the audience by creating an equal number of good men and women characters would be worse, but with feminism comes fairness for all, not the superiority of the female race.
Thelma & Louise’s problem is not in its ideas, but in part of its execution. In the end, we just have to take the men in this film as symbols of all masculine ugliness faced by women.
The movie is a lot of fun to watch. We see the two friends transform into different people in a matter of days. Louise, once the level head of the duo, is revealed in all her human frailties. Thelma, once the little girl, is now a free spirit. But liberation from their former lives has had tremendously disastrous repercussions for both women. They have turned to crime for excitement, and one of the disturbing things about this movie is that is equates violence with liberation and expression. In one scene, J. D. gets Thelma into bed and we assume she experiences her first orgasm. That scene has Thelma & Louise equating sex with liberation, and after J. D. thieves all the money that was meant for the two friends’ future in Mexico, the scene curiously matches up with the earlier rape scene, telling us molestation manifests itself in many ways.
The characters of Thelma & Louise are given fiery life by Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, who are both the heart and soul of this film. Their performances needed to be great to achieve the heights this movie reaches. Davis takes on the role of the more naïve of the two, and she has a daredevil quality about her that is immediately unleashed after she gets out of her housewife robe and into her vacation outfit. When Thelma robs a store after J. D. steals Louise’s money, she does it with enthusiasm, and Davis has a knack for comedy. Sarandon gives one of her best performances and she is forceful and smart and unapologetic. The two performances are inseparable; recognizing one without the other would be ridiculous. Actors often use tennis as a metaphor for their craft- if one actor is not hitting the ball right, there is nothing for the other to work from. Here, both women play masterfully.
A lot of the visceral thrills we get from Thelma & Louise are from exploitation of the thrill of revenge. When Thelma tells Darryl to go and f*** himself, we get a kick out of the repressed little girl fighting back at her horrible repressor. When the girls shoot down the truck of the rude, disgusting truck driver who makes obscene gestures at them, we laugh and get giddy. Though we might hate to admit it, we even feel a sick sense of satisfaction seeing the rapist gunned down in mid-insult. Thelma & Louise is about those gut reactions to situations. In one scene, even Thelma, out of the blue, starts laughing uncontrollably about the look of her would-be rapist’s face when he got hit with the bullet in his chest. Louise scolds, "It isn’t funny." Thelma knows it. The whole film is based on the gut reactions, thoughts, and feelings of these women. The two important decisions made in the film, when Louise kills Harlan and when the two, after they are surrounded by the police, refuse to turn themselves in and ride off the cliffs of Grand Canyon to their death, were not really decisions but actions done on a whim. Thelma & Louise studies the effects of these impulses and the inevitability of the wrong thought and wrong move.
Thelma & Louise is the marriage of the road movie genre and the feminist film, but I feel calling it ‘feminism’ is being patronizing. Yes, the film has a desire to show us all the hideousness of the chauvinism women have to put up with, and shouldn’t have to put up with or expect, but the movie has a much wider, provocative, and intelligent scope than that. The film has wonderful feminine strokes: these sexy criminals drink alcohol from little bottles, apply lipstick, and ogle men’s butts, but the broader idea of the movie can be applied to the lives of men, and does not apply to all women. Ridley Scott and cinematographer Adrian Biddle create the world of the westerns, sun-drenched and dusty. Two cowgirls fight off sexism with their guns and prowess. Thankfully, Ridley Scott allows the power of the script to take over, whereas in his previous films (Blade Runner, for example), style seemed more important than content.
Thelma & Louise has something to say about sheltered people and the real world. Thelma, who has never been away from her town, is ignorant of much about the repulsiveness of the outside world, other than what she has seen on T.V. She has never needed to defend herself from people (Darryl, even in his misogyny, looks as harmless as a flea), and is open to everybody she meets. Louise’s past is referenced more than once, and the ominous state of Texas is mentioned. We assume she got raped in Texas, and she is cautious and experienced enough to know the wolves that lurk out there. Thelma & Louise tells us that one’s consciousness, one’s collected experiences, are connected with the reactions and the impulses. If Louise had not experienced what was in Texas, would she have shot? Her killing of Thelma’s molester was, of course, unethical, but it could almost be seen as uncontrollable, and her past in Texas helps us to understand why she committed the murder, but is not meant to make us give her hollow pity. If Thelma had not been so eager to break out of her cocoon, if she hadn’t been locked in that cocoon in the first place, would the two still be fugitives? Thelma & Louise can also be seen as an indirect criticism of the considerably more violent nature of the female gender since women’s liberation and the feminist movement in the ‘60s.
The ending to this film is very disturbing. The score crudely insists on making it some form of triumph and heroism, masking its tragedy, but it is still very powerful and deeply affecting. Thelma and Louise are faced with a decision when the cops finally catch up to them. Detective Hal is present among the army of armed policemen; he wants to save the girls. But they are beyond saving; as Louise said, "You get what you settle for." The women, who were just liberated a few days ago from normalcy, can’t settle for a life stifled. So they drive off into the horizon holding hands, and soar off into the depths of Grand Canyon. They settle for death over imprisonment or death by the law. Thelma & Louise, a film as flawed, moving, and politically incorrect as ever, makes one more synonym: liberation is equal to death.
By Andrew Chan
Get your own Free Home Page