Thelma & Louise 1991

Movie's fucking amazing. At the end, I realized that this boiled down to the unlikely bond and connection between Thelma and Louise. At the beginning of the movie, we see each character packing their bags for the big trip. Lousie travels light, and through her neat and precise ways of loading the suitcase, we see who she really is; a sensible woman. She packs only essentials, and folds everything up neatly so it will fit well. Thelma on the other hand, packs way too many unnecessary things. Clothes she'll never wear, soaps she'll never use. This little interspliced sequence with the two women packing their bags tells us a lot abbout their characters. They're completely different people. And we see this displayed time and time again throughout the picture.

Thelma commits multiple acts of adultery, robs a store, and is quite permiscuous. Whereas Louise is a very calm, internal, street-smart woman. Throughout the whole story; Louise takes control of the situation, and calls the shots. Thelma is like her retarded child. Although, at the end; Louise becomes more like Thelma, and ends up unwinding the uptightness. It was a very character driven movie, and directed very well. The black cyclist that finds the state trooper in the trunk is definitely my favorite character.

This is attempting to be a pretty detailed critique of the patriarchy. For a while it stays surprisingly nuanced for a big Hollywood movie, pointing at stuff like the juridical system, marriage, manipulation and sex to keep women in their place. However, the movie unfortunately gets dumber and more black & white as it goes along, thus turning from an interesting drama into a full blown genre exercise. For example, it's a pretty big ask to attempt to let the viewer empathize with people who rob a gas station because they lost money due to their own naïvety. You have two very likable characters in the lead, but that's simply one bridge too far. It turns two complex characters into simple criminals. As a result, I started to lose more and more sympathy for the leads as the story continued, which definitely wasn't Scott's intention. It keeps playing with this idea that these women are victims of unfortunate circumstances, which isn't entirely true. The ending is interestingly misandrist, but emotionally it doesn't quite hit the mark because of some stupid writing decisions leading up to that point. Nevertheless, the acting's pretty great, visually it's very solid (great locations, good camerawork), it's well paced and the comedy hits. Technically, its biggest flaw easily lies with the use of sound. The music selection is pretty shitty (and there's way too much of it), a lot of the score doesn't fit in their respective scenes and some of the sound effects aren't great. All in all, there are a lot of memorable scenes and ideas here, but intellectually it's about as manipulative as the men in Thelma and Louise's lives.

6.5/10