Director Report Card: Ridley Scott (1991)

7. Thelma & Louise

In 1988, music video producer Callie Khouri had an idea for a movie. Despite never having written a script before, she drew inspiration from her and her friends' lives. Initially assuming she'd direct the movie herself as a low-budget production, the script eventually crossed the desk at Ridley Scott's production company. Scott was enthusiastic about making the film but was initially uncertain about directing it himself. Michelle Pfeiffer, who was attached to star at the time alongside Jodie Foster, had to talk him into it. This, of course, would be an extremely wise decision on Scott's behalf. “Thelma & Louise” would become one of the most iconic and widely discussed films of the decade, restoring the director's auteur license in the process.

Louise is a waitress with little patience for men's bullshit. Her best friend is Thelma, a housewife who suffers a lot of casual abuse at the hand of her asshole husband. Thelma is talked into going on a weekend fishing trip with Louise, without telling her husband. While dancing and drinking at a honky-tonk bar, Thelma is sexually assaulted by a strange man. Instinctively, Louise shoots the man dead. The two go on the run together, tearing down the south-western roads towards Mexico. They pick up a hunky hitchhiker, rob some gas stations, and become wanted outlaws. The police, led by a sympathetic detective, is on their trails but Thelma and Louise refuse to be caught.

In 1991, “Thelma & Louise” would be considered a landmark feminist film. It achieves this by, in many ways, giving women the exact kind of wish fulfillment fantasies that men have had for decades. It's about two women casting off the restraints of their day-to-day lives and finding themselves in the process. They transform from ordinary human beings into cooler-than-cool outlaws, that get to taunt the cops following them and are involved in exciting car chases. Thelma even gets to sleep with a super hot himbo. Guys have always had stories like this, about being bad-ass and escaping conformity and having hot sex with hot people, but women getting a tale like this really was something largely unprecedented in the early nineties.

There's a very specific part of this fantasy that makes it distinctly different from a male wish fulfillment story. All throughout the film, Thelma and Louise have to put up with abusive, entitled, asshole men. Thelma's husband is a petty tyrant, who has controlled her life since she was eighteen and won't even let her hang out with a friend. While traveling on the road, they are repeatedly catcalled and harassed by a piggish truck driver. At one point, they get pulled over by a cop that lords his authority over them. Each one of these guys – archetypal examples of horrible men women encounter in their every day lives – are defeated. The control freak husband is increasingly humiliated by his wife's antics. The asshole traffic cop is reduced to tears before being shoved in the trunk of his own patrol car. The catcalling trucker gets held at gunpoint, criticized for his behavior, and then has his truck blown up. I imagine these are common fantasies every women has had and seeing them acted out on-screen must've been cathartic.

Of course, there's a big difference between a male power fantasy and a female power fantasy. The trauma of sexual assault looms large over this story. Thelma is raped in the bar parking lot, by a man that sure seemed charming at first but refused to take no for an answer. That turned violent and possessive the minute he got her alone. Louise observes that no one would believe the true story, simply because everyone saw Thelma dancing with him. And she's probably right. Before long, Thelma learns that Louise is a rape survivor too, who has buried her trauma so deep she can't even stand crossing over into the state it happened in. To be a woman is to live under the constant threat of sexual violence, something even a wish fulfillment story like this must unavoidably address. 

But "Thelma & Louise" is not one of those dreary movies that endlessly rehash the trauma of sexual abuse. Nor are its title characters solely defined by their statuses as victims. Instead, this is a movie much more about the bond they have. Thelma and Louise both have men that waltz in and out of their lives. None of them are able to approach the women with empathy and understanding. Thelma and Louise understand each other because they've both been through the same kind of shit. When Louise doesn't want to talk about something, Thelma doesn't push the issue. When one of them screws up, the other does her best to help. They have a bond rooted in their shared experiences as women, treating each other exactly how they always wished men would treat them. That's what makes "Thelma & Louise" a movie specifically about sisterhood. 

"Thelma & Louise" is also part of the long tradition of the American road movie. The titular duo may be on the run from the cops nearly the entire time, forced into their situation by circumstance... Yet there's still something freeing about driving a sports car down the winding highway. If this is a movie about breaking out of the restrains of every day life, the freedom of the endless road represents this. No wonder this is where Thelma redefines herself, finding a skill for being an outlaw. When the gas in your tank is the only limit you have, anything is possible.

It's understandable why Ridley Scott was initially uncertain if he was the right director for this job. This is not a story that features a brooding metropolis, full of white smoke billowing out of sewer grates. Instead, Scott adapts his style to the movie's south-western setting. We have light breaking through the plateaus of the desert. The film noir angles Scott is obsessed with are redone from the seat of a car, as Thelma or Louise drive through the night. Of course, the movie does eventually include car chases and explosions. In fact, Scott has gotten really good at luxuriating in the orange waves of a massive fireball. Besides, one has to actively work to make the deserts of Utah, were the movie was shot, not look incredibly gorgeous and cinematic.

"Thelma & Louise" owes a lot of its success to its leading ladies. Geena Davis actively campaigned for the role. Davis projects an incredible sense of youth and vulnerability at first, seeming totally baby-faced. Which makes her eventual transformation into a free-spirited outlaw all the more surprising. Yet Davis makes this change completely believable, reveling in the joy Thelma feels at being truly free for the first time in her life. It's an enchanting and powerful bit of acting.

Of course, one is not complete without the other. If Geena Davis is the free-spirited kid, Susan Sarandon's Louise is the worrying older sister. Sarandon makes Louise a knot of anxiety throughout large portions of the film. She's lived more than Thelma. She knows how the world, and men, are. Yet this nervousness eventually evolves into a harder shell. Louise breaks down in private, never shying away from her vulnerable qualities, but pretends to be in control when on the phone with the cops or facing off other adversaries. It's a nuanced acting from Sarandon, showing depth and complexity.

Quite a few talented supporting men were drafted to appear in the film. Tough guy character actors, Harvey Keitel and Michael Madsen, are cast against type as two of the movie's less toxic guys. Keitel is seemingly the only man who approaches the duo with sympathy, trying to understand them and not just contain them. Madsen – who still gets to bluster and overturn chairs – is uncharacteristically chill as Louise's boyfriend. He's even romantic, beneath a certain gruff exterior. Of course, Brad Pitt was the breakout star of the film. Pitt's raw sexuality is impossible to take your eyes off of, charm oozing from every pore. He's absolutely irresistible, which makes him the perfect actor for this fantasy role. If these are the movie's kind men, Christopher McDobald is perfect as Thelma's prick husband. He's ridiculous and over-the-top and completely true to life for this kind of guy.

When one discusses "Thelma & Louise," you really can't avoid talking about its famous ending. Upon first viewing, I was honestly a little disappointed in it. The decision by the duo to drive forward into the Grand Canyon seems almost impulsive. It also seems like an almost mean-spirited ending after everything they went through. Yet, ultimately, I can't imagine this tale ending any other way. It's a sad fact that Thelma and Louise would rather drive head first into a canyon than have to put up with a world that won't believe them. That, in dying, they are more free than they'd be alive. And it's really such a tender conclusion, the sisters kissing and holding hands as they plunge off into oblivion. They ended their story on their own terms and there's something admirable about that.

"Thelma & Louise would be a box office success  and receive five Oscar nominations, including Ridley Scott's first Best Director nod. More importantly, it would drive discussion all throughout the media. Naturally, some very sensitive dudes accused the movie of misandry. Others debated whether the movie was the right kind of feminist. The fact that the movie has survived as an iconic statement, still feeling totally relevant in 2021, suggests "Thelma & Louise" were on the right track all along. Some have suggested that a woman probably should've directed this, which really isn't wrong. (Though the writer's voice absolutely shines through.) Yet this feels like nitpicking when the movie gets so much right. The frequent parodies and references have done little to diminish it's power. [Grade: B+]