Ridley Scott's THELMA & LOUISE was released in 1991 to an unprecedented level of uproar against the film's chauvinist preoccupation, but how much of it is true?
Louise talks her best friend, bored housewife Thelma, into packing together some bags and taking off for the weekend. Notwithstanding her overbearing husband's wishes for her to remain at home like she's expected to, Thelma agrees and, leaving him a microwave dinner and a beer, she joins Louise in her classic ThunderBird '66 car, packing it to the brim with everything but her kitchen sink, to cruise the highways, smoke cigarettes, sing Aretha Franklin inspired songs and enjoy America's beautiful great outdoors.
At a country bar along the way they have one too many drinks and Thelma gets involved with a charming cowboy who in one moment, like a gentleman, escorts her outside to the parking lot for air and in the next moment forces her onto a car to have his way. Louise appears, physically and emotionally shaken by what she's seeing, and yielding a gun orders
him to pull up his pants and back away. With his pants pulled up he willingly backs away, but not without some verbal backlash, which results in Louise spending hardly a second to shoot him dead. With no physical evidence that Thelma was raped, and numerous witnesses of the drunken Thelma flirting with the cowboy all night long, a knowing Louise convinces the now sober Thelma that they can't go to the police. They have to take the plunge and run, to Mexico, for their very lives. Louise talks her on-off boyfriend into wiring them her life savings, they pick up a hitchhiker, another charming cowboy who Thelma takes to, Thelma discovers the magic of sex for the first time in her previously sheltered life, the cowboy hitchhiker, a self-confessed thief, robs them of all their money, Louise, by far the strongest character up until now, finally cracks into a weeping shadow of her former self, the previously timid and now liberated Thelma takes over the reigns of leader, resorts to robbing a convenience store to restore their money to them, and off they go again, desperados, the F.B.I. hot on their tail, cruising the highways, smoking cigarettes, singing Aretha Franklin inspired songs and enjoying America's beautiful great outdoors.
Ridley Scott, at the time of this film's release, had made himself into a great director through such science fiction classics as ALIEN and BLADE RUNNER, and does a commendable job here in proving that you don't need technology to make a great film.
The performances are superb. Harvey Keitel does a brilliant job instilling his character of detective with a respectable amount of consideration and respect towards the two outlaw women. Christopher McDonald is good as Thelma's husband and Michael Madsen is incredibly effective as Louise's on-off boyfriend, his performance alone filling in many of the gaps associated with their non-committal relationship. Brad Pitt is also amidst the glory as the cowboy hitchhiker, his incredibly charming presence justification in itself of Thelma's fling with him after what happened to her in the parking lot. The greatest performances, though, are due wholly to the enjoyable-to-watch bond between the two leads, Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon as the gun-toting couple, Davis on one hand perfectly documenting Thelma's increasing strong will whilst Sarandon perfectly documenting Louise's depleting strong will held aloft in the end by that of her best friend's.
Indeed, what is in effect a road movie, a buddy movie with feminist undertones, because THELMA & LOUISE is such great fun, works just as well on all dramatic levels, and to answer the film's biggest criticism, that it's overtly obsessed with portraying all its men as chauvinists, possessive and sexist, it in no way does this without instilling itself with numerous justifications, namely the fact that Thelma and Louise never once leave the gun-slinging, beer swilling cowboy states of America and so, with a gun-slinging, beer swilling cowboy never far away, two smart and sexy women on their own are simply the obvious targets of attention. In fact, the men in the film, and so the heated debate of the men in the film, are of no importance to the central theme, that of victimised women in a male-dominated society finally taking control of their own lives, empowering themselves to make their own decisions and reap their own just desserts. If there is to be any criticism within the two hours it's the unlikely ease in which the police track the fugitive couple down. It in no way detracts from the enjoyment or satisfaction of this vivid film, but it should certainly be more of a talking point than the over-exaggerated gender war. Great stuff.
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Thelma & Louise
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Feb 22nd, 2007
(Oct 19th, 2007)
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