Thelma & Louise

Getting back to Geena Davis, who recently won the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, her other Oscar-nominated role was in Thelma & Louise, as Thelma, the more naïve member of the pair that made movie history back in 1991. Directed by Ridley Scott, with a screenplay by Callie Khouri, Thelma & Louise has rightly been considered a classic.

Watching it again I marveled at how the narrative flowed. We don't know much about the pair. Louise, played by Susan Sarandon, is a single working woman with a boyfriend (Michael Madsen). She left Texas for Arkansas but won't say why. Davis is a housewife, married to an asshole (Christopher McDonald), and she's sure he won't even let her go for a weekend in the woods with Louise, so she takes off and leaves him a note.

With little information, the screenplay slowly but surely fills in the gaps. When Thelma wants to visit a roadhouse on their trip, she gets drunk and dances several dances with a local Lothario. He gets rough in the parking lot, and Louise breaks it up with a handgun. But he says some insulting things, so she shoots him dead. The rest of the film is them on the lam, trying to get to Mexico, but the audience learning things about the characters as they discover new parts of themselves.

There is an argument about whether this film is a feminist statement. Certainly it has elements of female empowerment, such as when they pull over a piggish truck driver and make him pay for his rudeness. But some feminists argue that this is simply a revenge film, and that the pair continuously make stupid mistakes. Louise's action in the parking lot was totally uncalled for, as the situation was de-escalated and she could have walked away. Thelma makes an even poorer decision by sleeping with a young hitchhiker (Brad Pitt--this was the movie that introduced him and his abs to much of America) who then steals all their money. But the film does take the position that women were treated as second-class citizens and were not given the benefit of the doubt, and that because Davis had danced with the man the law and society in general might have believed she had it coming. Unfortunately, not much has progressed since then.

Also, the film stacks the feminist view a bit too much. McDonald's character has no redeeming qualities, making us wonder why Davis, a sweet woman, would have married him in the first place. The trucker scene also stacks the deck, as he is simply scum. On the other hand, Madsen and Harvey Keitel, as the cop who wants to help, are given some depth.

The ending of the film, much discussed, bothers me. That the pair choose death over imprisonment is one thing, but it seems that Khouri wrote herself into a bind and couldn't get out of it. An alternate ending, which shows the car slowly falling into the gorge, was rightly axed, as it emphasized their deaths. I don't know what the ending should have been, but it should have been something more clever.

This was the apex of Davis' acting career. She scored again the following year with A League Of Their Own, but then made a few bad choices (Cutthroat Island, directed by her then husband Renny Harlin) and The Long Kiss Goodnight, led to some long layoffs.