Thelma & Louise Turns 30
When Thelma & Louise came out 30 years ago, its trailer made it look like it was going to be a female-buddy road movie, complete with an explosion and wisecracks. After it hit screens, it was recognised with major awards – it won an Oscar for its screenwriter, Callie Khouri, as well as nominations including for its female stars, Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, and its director Ridley Scott – and acknowledged as a seminal film about female friendship and independence.
Three decades on, it has lost none of its power. You probably remember the plot: Thelma (Davis), a downtrodden housewife, joins her feisty, fast-talking friend Louise (Sarandon) for a weekend away. Louise is briefly escaping her mundane job as a waitress, while Thelma is looking to cut loose – if only for a couple of days – from husband Darryl, who constantly barks orders at her and expects her to keep house. But the trip quickly takes a dark turn: a drunk Thelma is nearly raped by a local at a roadside bar and Louise shoots him dead in the parking lot. From then, the two are on the run, dodging a dogged policeman (Harvey Keitel) as they get deeper into trouble.
But the drama really comes from the two female leads. Yes, there is shooting (multiple times, in fact) and law-evading, but the biggest thrills come from seeing the way these women shed their oppressed selves and become lighter, stronger and freer. Pretty soon, Thelma tells her husband to go fuck himself, and it’s a good thing too: she immediately runs into – literally – a young Brad Pitt (in his breakout movie role) who woos her into bed and makes her realise that sex can be mutually gratifying.
Louise hasn’t led quite as oppressed a life as Thelma, but her life is a constrained one, if some of those constraints are self-imposed: we see her pack for her weekend by putting her shoes in plastic bags and she ensures her house is immaculate before she leaves. She clearly hasn’t reckoned with her shadowy past, either; it becomes evident that she shoots Thelma’s assailant because he triggered a past trauma of her own.
“In Thelma & Louise, her main struggle is with control. She is forced to let go of it as events spiral in a dizzying fashion; eventually she learns to move forward while firmly behind the wheel – both figuratively and literally. ”
In Thelma & Louise, her main struggle is with control. She is forced to let go of it as events spiral in a dizzying fashion; eventually she learns to move forward while firmly behind the wheel – both figuratively and literally.
This story of two bad-ass women still rings true for the #MeToo era, so it’s not surprising that 30 years ago, it was considered controversial. Some decried its portrayal of men, and it’s true that there’s a long list of terrible men in the film. Darryl is a demanding lout, while Harlan – who tries to rape Thelma – drips misogyny from every pore.
There’s a crude truck driver who hassles the women when they pass him on the road, leering at them and shouting obscenities; they wreak revenge by blowing up his truck. Even Brad Pitt is no prize: he robs Thelma of the money that guarantees a safe landing for the pair.
But there are good men among this crop. Harvey Keitel is the cop who is sympathetic to their plight even as he tries to track the women down. Michael Madsen is Louise’s boyfriend who truly shows up when it matters. And Brad Pitt may be a criminal, but he confesses his past deeds to Thelma from the outset, while retaining a manner both emotional and sexual that proves he doesn’t see women as the weaker sex. Thelma & Louise doesn’t bash men, it just insists they learn how to do better when necessary. “You be sweet to your wife,” says Thelma after locking a cop inside his police car at gunpoint. “My husband wasn’t sweet to me and look how I turned out.”
The truth is, the men in Thelma & Louise are beside the point. They’re there to demonstrate how Thelma and Louise are each seen in the world, and how they see themselves. In the first instance, that’s as caretakers, domestic slaves, worker bees. But on this road trip, they realise there is a power that lies in friendship: Louise’s insistence that Thelma takes a stance and Thelma’s influence on Louise to cut loose. They don’t compete with each other or diminish each other; they support and uplift one another. They are literally each other’s ride or die – and in this movie, that’s not just a figure of speech.
No matter what the outcome of their escapade (there’s not just one way to read the somewhat ambiguous ending), they realise there’s something worse than capture, punishment or even death: it’s to live life without any agency or spark or zest or commitment to having the best goddamn time you can have each and every second. The movie’s tag line is also its ultimate lesson: You get what you settle for.
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