Ryan McNeil
With the release of PROMETHEUS this week, many spaces have taken the opportunity to look back on the career of director Ridley Scott. Predictably, much of the chatter has focused on ALIEN, with a little bit more on BLADE RUNNER.
For me, Scott has long been a director I’ve admired no matter whether his film has left me fulfilled or left me wanting. With the year that we’ve had, I thought it best to leave the sci-fi aside a moment, and go back to a different sort of cultural touchstone in Scott’s filmography. Thanks to Mallory Kane, Lisbeth Salander, and Princess Merida, we find ourselves in a potent stretch of cinematic girl power…so I felt it best to rewind the tape 20 years and go back to THELMA & LOUISE.
If you haven’t seen it, THELMA & LOUISE is about two friends that plan a weekend road trip. Louise (Susan Sarandon) is the savvy, sassy waitress who won’t take any flack; Thelma (Genna Davis) is the submissive, neglected housewife in search of some excitement. At their very first pit stop, Thelma catches the attention of a seemingly forward and ultimately shitheaded redneck who comes this close to raping Thelma in the parking lot. Louise intervenes, and ultimate shoots Louise’s attacker to death, spurring the two women to lam it and become fugitives from the law.
The film was a cultural touchstone, bringing in respectable box office for an R-rated film, and scoring itself six Oscar nominations. As the world was coming to understand the term “sexual harassment”, this film bent the standard road movie formula into a new direction…seemingly taking the Y chromosomes from the template laid down by Butch and Sundance.
Twenty-one years later, some things have held up, and some things haven’t.
I should point out that unlike every other entry in my series of “Another day” posts, I didn’t see THELMA & LOUISE on a big screen the first time around. Ten years after its release I finally watched the full film on dvd: Ten years after that, I finally caught it on a big screen. As I watched that screening, I was quite smitten with how handsome the film still looked. Movies of the era tended to come with hazy filter to them, and a muted palette. This movie on the other hand, has a vibrant snap to almost every shot, and makes the best use of its vast setting of the open road. I’d actually put the shot at the top of this post up as one of Ridley Scott’s all-time best.
Not only does the film look great, but it still sounds great too. The mix on those twangy road tunes chimes out wonderfully, every bit of dialogue is crystal clear, and the audio gives equal importance to the loudest gunshot, and the quietest desert breeze.
With most of the dialogue and every performance holding up, one might think that THELMA & LOUISE has survived as a beacon of the era, and a touchstone for feminism.
One might think that, but I’m not sure how true that is.
For starters, there’s the ending of the story. It’s understandable that Thelma and Louise would run rather than take ownership of killing Harlan the Redneck Shithead. As Louise points out, the whole bar saw Thelma and Harlan acting cozy all night, so even if “no means no” was fully understood in 1991…it might be hard to get it to stick in a rural Oklahoma honky-tonk. So the women make a run for it – so far, so good. As they go from place to place struggling to keep the law off their trail, and trying to keep dreamy Brad Pitt from stealing their funds, they continue to take matters into their own hands, with no regard for what may or may not be proper. Aces.
However, when the law finally catches up with them, and Louise likewise reveals that she has a prior record that will complicate matters further, their final show of empowerment is **SPOILERS if You’ve Been Living Under a Stone** to take their lives by driving their vintage Thunderbird off the edge of The Grand Canyon. It’s a detail that would completely unravel a lesser film. Other films of the era stood up and said “Forget your perceptions, and respect a woman’s right to say ‘no'”, and with that they became true touchstones for feminism. What’s the message to take away from THELMA & LOUISE? “If it seems like you’re about to lose the fight, quit fighting before you can lose?”.
It’s unfortunate, because up until that one last moment, we’re with our heroines every step of the way.
The other unfortunate reality of the film is how little it seemed to change in terms of what Hollywood films get made and marketed. You’d think the success of a film with two female leads, and only supporting parts for the boys would get studios to think differently about market potential. You’d think that twenty years of evolution would have changed the groupthink of the old guard and that a film like this could get a serious push. Unfortunately, such idealism still isn’t the case.
For every one DRAGON TATTOO that studios decide to rally behind, there’s a dozen HAYWIRE’s that get dumped into January because the powers that be can’t figure out how to sell a story about a strong, independent, ass-kicking female protagonist. And while a role model like Katniss Everdeen might be slowly paving the way for a re-evaluation of what a young woman ought to be, such discussion is only coming after four years of Bella Swan biting her lip and trying to choose between two broody boys.
Within the confines of the movie screen, THELMA & LOUISE executes every bit as well as it did the day it premiered – crummy ending notwithstanding. Beyond the edges of the screen is where the work still has to be done, both in Hollywood and in our own perceptions. Perhaps then, the flight of Thelma and Louise will seem like antiquated thinking.
I haven’t seen this film in ages and really need to revisit it already.
I get what you are saying, but I dunno about this whole feminist theory. I mean as much as I *love* your second-last paragraph, I think the ending was pretty perfect. I love it when antiheroes (sort of) do not give in. I mean technically, if you think about it, had they “stood for their beliefs” or whatever, they would still have been ridiculed and penalised for the rest of their lives. It makes them all the more awesome by not giving in. Like for me, that was the best aspect of something like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. If they can do it, why not Thelma and Louise?
A very good point, except that Butch and Sundance were career criminals; Thelma and Louise were two ordinary women who’d stepped into a mess.
And I don’t know that they would have been ridiculed…two women who said “Fuck this” and took matters into their own hands? I think in a lot of circles they’d be quite respected for standing up for themselves.
Thanks for writing this, Ryan. I’m very much with you here. Sometimes I wonder if Thelma & Louise is meant to illustrate just how trapped women in America feel by the American justice system (and its assumptions about women, rape, etc.). Their choice of death is so definite that it implies “this is easier than dealing with all the assumptions, etc.” But then I remember that to chose death over life is not really very feminist at all–it’s an ending like in Kate Chopin’s “Awakening”–that left me thinking “how feminist can it be, if all the women end up dead?”
I too wish the ending had been different. But would it be a successful road movie if it ended with an arrest and debates about whether or not “she asked for it”? Probably not so much; so I’m not surprised it ends the way it does.
Well now I don’t need to watch AWAKENING…
It might have been more illustrative in its time than it is now that we’ve adjusted our perceptions that little bit. It is a noble death that they choose, but all these years later I keep wishing they’d chosen some other way out.
I wonder about this – would I feel the same way if they’d died driving the other way…if their fate came an act of aggression rather an act of escape…
Well, just call me JOANNA: EXPERT CLASSIC NOVEL/MOVIE SPOILER. I shouldn’t have assumed everyone was forced to read The Awakening in high school, mea culpa.
I actually really like your idea for an alternate ending–if they had driven towards the police and even died in a crash it might have been better, b/c at least they were taking on the system that had failed them that way.
No worries about it – this pales in comparison to the screening I went to in January that came was preceded by a lecture, and the speaker pointed out the ending right before we were about to roll film.
This is the last Ridley Scott film I enjoyed. I certainly agree with you that the ending is weak, especially the freeze frame at the end. Still, I liked the characters and performances a lot and it was fun to see a young Brad Pitt.
You weren’t fussed about KINGDOM OF HEAVEN? That seems like your sort of flick.
It’s been a bit since I’ve seen this, but just reading this elicits something of an emotional response in me. In theory, the ending probably should not work especially if one considers it on ethical grounds (suicide isn’t glamorous) but structurally it does emerge to me as the only way to end it, complete with the freeze (we don’t see the fall-out just the jump, pause it in the moment when it’s beautiful), and they can’t live in the world anymore because – up to that time – the world couldn’t quite deal with them. A fatalistic view, definitely, but the honest one for them.
It is something of a deceptive movie, but in a good way I think, it lulls you into comfort, complicity and then sort wrecks you.
(I also appreciate for silly things like Oscar trivia, one of the few films with a both female leads nominated for Best Actress. And, I’m in the minority in thinking it, but I wish one of them – Sarandon – had won that Oscar over Foster, but that’s superfluous.)
I did love what Sarandon did in this film…and just adore her acting prowess in general…but it’s hard to dull what Foster brought to the role of Clarice Starling.
I like your point about the film being deceptive. If I were to counter that, I’d offer that the film is 95% of a glorious story with a somewhat unfortunate ending. I’m not the sort who believes that a dissatisfying ending ruins 120 minutes of goodwill, but for me it’s the one detail that holds this remarkable film back.
As I mentioned earlier, I think if you turn the car around and drive towards the cops, it changes things dramatically.
If they drive towards the cops, then they risk killing even more people before they go out in their blaze of glory. Killing for them was an act of self-defence, though the courts wouldn’t really have seen it that way. Probably not even now. I’d choose to go out still free if I could, rather than having to go on trial and defend myself for defending myself. I think I’m the opposite – I’d be disappointed if it had ended any OTHER way.
Interesting that, if a male lead goes out in a suicidal blaze of glory, it’s valiant and heroic. But when a woman does it, it holds back society’s skewed version of “feminism”. Doesn’t the true power of ANY person, male or female, really reside in the choices they are able to make, and in the fact that they can make ’em? 😉
I’d be more prone to agree with you on courts not believing justifiable homicide if this film didn’t come three years after THE ACCUSED. The whole point of that movie was to take us out of the mindset of “She asked for it”, meanwhile Louise grabs Thelma and runs because she thinks they’ll get hit by the hammer of “She asked for it”.
The other hiccup is that only one of them (Louise again) is going to get charged with murder. While they’re both going to have to fend off robbery & destruction of property, it’s not like they both went on a killing spree that will cost them their lives if they get brought in.
Long story short, regardless how many guns were pointed at them, they didn’t have to die. That’s the key for me, far more than male vs. female swan-diving into death…that even in fleeing from justice they were taking more and more control of their situation regardless of the law – so not really dig in when you reach the moment of truth?
Instead, they stop fighting and give up.
I completely agree with SuezQ- my point exactly.
Even though I still disagree, I can’t blame you for agreeing with Susie – she’s one smart cookie!
Awesome review. I saw T&L a couple years ago but I still remember the ending being very exciting. However, I hadn’t thought about the message it gave to women and you make some interesting points about that. I especially loved the last part of your review:
“For every one DRAGON TATTOO that studios decide to rally behind, there’s a dozen HAYWIRE’s that get dumped into January because the powers that be can’t figure out how to sell a story about a strong, independent, ass-kicking female protagonist. And while a role model like Katniss Everdeen might be slowly paving the way for a re-evaluation of what a young woman ought to be, such discussion is only coming after four years of Bella Swan biting her lip and trying to choose between two broody boys.
Within the confines of the movie screen, THELMA & LOUISE executes every bit as well as it did the day it premiered – crummy ending notwithstanding. Beyond the edges of the screen is where the work still has to be done, both in Hollywood and in our own perceptions. Perhaps then, the flight of Thelma and Louise will seem like antiquated thinking.”
Within the confines of the movie screen, THELMA & LOUISE executes every bit as well as it did the day it premiered – crummy ending notwithstanding…
Exactly. The fact that I’m this grumpy about the fate of the women, but still sit here professing my love for the film shows just how solid the storytelling is. There are a lot of people out there who can ignore everything a movie has just done for them just because they don’t like that final note.
I’ve never understood that phenomenon.