Thelma & Louise (1991)

A pretty solid R rating.  The inciting incident is a visceral violent attempted rape followed by a murder.  There's a lot of language.  There's a fairly unnecessary sex scene that --oddly enough --doesn't really have nudity.  It's also a movie about a crime spree. I also am pretty sure that Thelma wears the stars and bars at one point. There's a lot that really earns this movie the R.  

DIRECTOR:  Ridley Scott

I'm tired and cranky.  No one is stopping me from going to bed.  I should just go to bed.  What am I doing instead?  Writing a blog about Thelma & Louise.  Sometimes, I even annoy myself.  There are a handful of modern classics that I've just avoided because I feel like I'm not necessarily the target audience.  I've been trying to make an effort by cathcing up on some of these movies.  But the second that I find out that these movies are on Criterion, I wait to own them.  It's the worst privileged snobby film thing I can think of.  Still, I now own Thelma & Louise.  I'll say that it ain't he worst Criterion to own.

At least 90% of this movie isn't the worst Criterion to own.  I wasn't prepped to like this movie the way that I did.  Thelma & Louise is one of those movies that is saddled with its memorable ending, so much so that people probably don't give this movie much of a watch anymore.  Heck, I considered myself culturally literate when it came to this movie because I knew the end.  (Just because I can, the movie ends with the eponymous characters driving the Thunderbird off the clipp into the Grand Canyon, ending it all.  I actually wonder how they filmed that show.) I always knew that it was Hollywood's answer to '90s feminism, but I was suprised for how much the movie got right.  It's just a shame that the parts that they got wrong really kind of take the wind out of my sails.

A little bit of confession time.  If I just turned 43 (yes, thank you for the birthday messages), I probably spent about the first 30 years of my life being a backwards, quasi proudly politically incorrect butthead.   I always thought that Thelma & Louise was probably a cornball, lightly progressive film and that's about it.  There was a string of movies that claimed to tout strong female characters, so much so that it became kind of a red flag when the phrase "strong female character" was thrown around in a press junket.  And it's not to say that Thelma & Louise doesn't fall into some of those trappings more times than it ought to.  Still, the movie actually has some pretty forward thoughts, especially for the politically incorrect early '90s.  

In my head, the issues I have with the movie (which I'm clearly dancing around) come from director Ridley Scott.  I always question what is the role of the ally.  Thelma & Louise is one of those rare movies that is part of the mainstream media that actually  called out some real issues of being an American woman in 1991. The movie is unabashedly and proudly calling out how hard it is to be a woman (I assume just because I'm trying to be a better person).  It straight up comments loudly that the notion of rape is more common with women than men give credit for.  Even more of a sledgehammer hit is the notion that men --especially law enforcement --tend not to believe reports of rape and sexual assault.  In fact, most of the movie hinges on the fact that Louise refuses to go to the police after shooting Harlan because she was raped in the events preceding the film.  I mean, good for this movie.  While the core of the movie is the friends and the accidental road trip that ensues as they flee pursuit, this is a movie about how women can't really talk about how hard it is to be a woman because there is a stigma to that kind of talk / support.  

So points to Ridley Scott for getting that right.  But there are two things that I really take issue with: 1) Everything before the inciting incident is pretty rough.  After Harlan is shot in the parking lot, the movie takes off and doesn't really let go.  But before that, I don't think that people really gave much thought to what life is like normally.  Boy-oh-boy, the choices that were made when Thelma and Louise were just people were kind of rough.  The movie wants to stress that Thelma finds herself on the roadtrip with Louise and that this nightmare scenario is the exact thing that Thelma needs to have at least a few moments of real living before she ends up driving off a cliff.  It's very Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  Both of these character need to have their lives exploded in a negative way before they can appreciate the joy of independence that their more confident friend gives them.  But in an attempt to show the wide gulf (pun intended) between Thelma in Act I and Thelma in Act III, Scott shapes Geena Davis's character into something that doesn't even resemble reality.  And because Act I Thelma is such a rug to be walked upon, she has to make some pretty brazen choices for the story to move forward.  It's actually a little bizarre how paradoxcial Thelma's choices are considering what she is dealing with when it comes to Darryl.  She's absolutely terrified of how Darryl will react to even small requests.  Yet, when she leaves Darryl to go on this vacation with Louise, she isn't terrified of how he's going to take it.  Instead, she makes this major leap forward into the Thelma that the movie's going to end with.  It doesn't really make a lot of sense and it feels like Scott might be rushing his character development just so we can appreciate the kind of Thelma that would blow up an oil tanker by the end of the film.

But the second issue I have with the movie is the thing that really bothers me.  The one thing that I was floored by was how horrific it made rape seem.  A lot of this has to be taken into context of 1991.  Geena Davis is Hollywood royalty by this point (I think).  When talking about rape in a lot of these movies, especially movies that were meant to be drawing big crowds, rape tended to be an offscreen thing, often portrayed by shadows, insinuation, and protestation.  But the movie really goes all out and makes Harlan out to be an absolute monster. Immediately after Louise shoots Harlan and the duo flees the honky-tonk, it is visually upsetting to see the abuse all over Thelma's face.  (I actually don't like that she heals as quickly as she does because it seems like that is more bruising than it is just washable blood.)  I applaud how the movie wanted the audience to feel uncomfortable because it is an uncomfortable reality that a lot of women face.  But that makes the sex scene with JD abhorrent.

As a dad in 2026, I'm kind of glad that couples in films don't automatically sleep together nowadays.  It's weird to think that even a family film like Superman II had characters sleep together as a means to keep people's attentions.  But it seems in really poor taste to have Thelma have sex with JD.  The narrative that the film is pushing is that Thelma is reclaiming her sexual urges as a woman as opposed to the burdensome sex that she has had with her husband.  And from a plot point, Thelma needs to leave JD in the hotel room alone so that JD can steal the money, leading to an escalation of events that the film needs.  But she was raped the day before.  It was violet and it led to her witnessing her best friend murdering her rapist.  The movie even goes as far as to have conversations about the trauma that comes with a rape attempt.  Yet, the second she gets a chance, she has apparently amazing sex with this guy?  That scene minimizes the impact of the rape scene so poorly that I question a lot of what the movie was shooting for.  I didn't care for that.  On top of that, we're meant to be disappointed in JD for taking advantage of this woman and stealing her money.  Think about how much more of a gut punch would happen if JD started laying on the moves, Thelma tells him that she's not ready, and the two of them talk until the sun comes up.  When he steals the money now, we'd be crushed even harder and it would lnd itself to the motifs of patriarchy that the movie deals in.

I'm going to gripe here.  I'm going to take two seconds to remind you that I actually really dug a lot of this movie.  But I do have to gripe, mainly because it's pretty easy to write about the things you dislike about a movie than the things you like.  I have to go back to how the film treats law enforcement.  If we're talking about the main antagonist of Thelma & Louise, it would have to be the FBI.  I mean, they are the guys who pursue these two women off a cliff, forcing them to commit suicide.  For a lot of the movie, the FBI agents are portrayed as boorish and emotionally dead inside.  It's so weird seeing Stephen Tobolowsky as the head of the homicide task force (?) and that he's more than mildly competent.  (Sorry, I'm more used to Needlenose Ned characters than anything else.) We're meant to root for Thelma and Louise to escape these guys.  So the movie has to make them unlikable.  But the movie, simultaneously, wants us to desperately like the cops.  Hal, played by Harvey Keitel in some pretty lazy, on-the-nose casting, is both a dirty cop and a cop with a heart of gold.  Like, in a movie like this, it wants to take pot shots at the patriarchy.  One of the fundamentals of the patriarchy is that it comfortably rests on the back of law enforcement, who make up a sizable percentage of the force.  But Hal keeps saying the right thing.  Golly, if I didn't know better, the message of the film --when it comes to law enforcement --is "not all men."   I don't know how the movie goes as hard as it does for women, only to pull punches when it comes to the cops, who literally push them into suicide.

Still, the movie is incredibly good.  I don't know why I normally don't love Susan Sarandon.  It's not like I've ever disliked her.  It's just that I love a lot of what she's doing in this movie.  Maybe it was a real life bond behind the screen, but these two women acting across from each other absolutely slayed.  Like, you can feel the chemistry between these two powerhouses.  Maybe that's why I get so mad at the first 20 minutes because when they are firing off of each other, the movie gets so appropriately dramatic.  And, yeah, I found myself screaming at the screen when they made bad choices.  There were so many moments when I was yelling at them and I think that was the point.  As confident as Louise comes across, she's figuring stuff out too. I mean, we can even blame Louise for losing the money because there was no reason to give it to Thelma at this point.  After all, Thelma's entire bit at this poing was that she kept on accidentally sabotaging everything that was going on with these two.  

But the film still holds up.  Does it have weaknesses?  Sure.  But as a movie, it's pretty darned solid.