This is an expansive, visionary tradition of the American
road picture. It celebrates the story of two carefree people jumping in a 1956
T-Bird and driving out of town to have some fun and start some purgatory. However,
we know the road better than that and we know the toll it exacts: Before their
travel is done, these characters with have gone through a rite of passage, and
will have discovered themselves.
Roger Ebert said in his review, “What sets “Thelma
& Louise” aside from the great central tradition of the road picture -- a
tradition roomy enough to accommodate “Easy Rider,” “Bonnie and Clyde,”
“Badlands,” “Midnight Run” and “Rain Man” -- is that the heroes are women this
time: Working-class girlfriends from a small Arkansas town, one a waitress, the
other a housewife, both probably ready to describe themselves as utterly
ordinary, both containing unexpected resources.”
We meet them on days that help to explain why they’d
like to get away for the weekend. Thelma (Geena Davis) is married to a man
(Christopher McDonald) filled with self-importance as the district sales manager
of a rug company. He sees his wife as beneath him, to be tolerated so long as
she keeps her household chores done and is patient with his temper. Louise
(Susan Sarandon) waits tables in a coffee shop and is involved with a musician (Michael
Madsen) who is never ever going to be ready to get hitched, no matter how much
she kids herself.
The two drive out for a weekend (Thelma is so
frightened of her husband she leaves him a note rather than tell him). They’re
almost looking to get into trouble, in a way. They end up in a saloon not too
far down the road, and Thelma, a wild woman after a couple of margueritas,
begins to get stuck in a situation after a couple of dances with an urban
cowboy, played by Timothy Carhart.
That leads, as such affairs sometimes sadly do, to an
attempted rape in the parking lot. After Louise comes to Thelma’s rescue, there
is a sudden, violent turn that ends with the man being shot. The two women now
drive away. They are convinced that no one would ever believe their story –
that the only answer for them is to run, and hide.
Ebert noted, “Now comes what in a more ordinary
picture would be the predictable stuff: The car running down lonely country
roads in front of a blood-red sunset, that kind of thing, with a lot of country
music on the soundtrack. “Thelma & Louise” does indeed contain its share of
rural visual extravaganza and lost railroad blues, but it has a heart, too.
Sarandon and Davis find in Callie Khouri’s script the materials for two
plausible, convincing, lovable characters. And as actors they work together
like a high-wire team, walking across even the most hazardous scenes without
putting a foot wrong.”
They have adventures as they drive, some sweet, some
tragic, including a meeting with a suspicious but attractive young man named
J.D., played by Brad Pitt, who is able, like the cowboy who was shot, to utilize
Thelma’s hidden desires, which was not touched by her husband. Ebert noted, “They
also meet old men with deep lines on their faces, and harbingers of doom, and
state troopers, and all the other inhabitants of the road.”
Obviously, they become the targets of a huge police
chase. Every cop in a six-state area would like to arrest them. However, back
home in Arkansas there’s one cop, played by Harvey Keitel, who has empathy for
them, who sees how they sunk themselves down and are now about to really drown.
He tries to reason with them. To “keep the situation from snowballing.” However,
it takes on a strange momentum of its own, especially as Thelma and Louise
begin to get tired with the how much freedom they have – and with the discovery
that they possess unheard of resources and capabilities.
“Thelma & Louise” was directed by Ridley Scott,
from Britain, whose previous films show complete technical achievement but are
sometimes not never interested in psychological questions. However, this film
shows a great sympathy for human comedy and it’s intriguing the way he helps us
to understand what’s going on inside these two women – why they need to do what
they do.
Ebert said, “I would have rated the movie at four
stars, instead of three and a half, except for one shot, the last shot before
the titles begin. This is the catharsis shot, the payoff,
the moment when Thelma and Louise arrive at the truth that their whole journey
has been pointed toward, and Scott and his editor, Thom Noble, botch it. It’s a
freeze frame that fades to white, which is fine, except it does so with
unseemly haste, followed immediately by a vulgar carnival of distractions:
flashbacks to the jolly faces of the two women, the roll of the end credits, an
upbeat country song.”
It's unsettling to get involved in a movie that takes
128 minutes to bring you to a resolution that the filmmakers appear to be
afraid of. If Scott and Mount had let the last shot run for seven to ten
seconds more, and then held the fade to white for a decent interval, they would
have gotten the payoff they deserved. Can one shot make that big of a difference?
This one does.
All of that aside, this is a powerful film that I
think everyone should see. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out. This is
an absolute must. Just seeing the way the two lead characters go through the
abuse they go through and find a reason why they want to escape, you’re rooting
for them the whole way. You can understand their reasons and see why they are
doing this, so you should definitely see it. I saw a little bit of it as a kid,
but saw it much later when I was probably in my late teens, early twenties. I
give it a high recommendation.
Alright, next week I will be looking at a film I saw
in my senior year of high school, but recently went back to watch, as we continue
“Brad Pitt Month.”
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