Thelma & Louise
1991, USA, drama/comedy/road movie
129 mins
​
directed by Ridley Scott
cinematography by Adrian Biddle
music by Hans Zimmer
screenplay by Callie Khouri

CAST
Geena Davis as Thelma Dickinson
Susan Sarandon as Louise Sawyer
Harvey Keitel as Detective Hal Slocumb
Christopher McDonald as Darryl Dickinson
Michael Madsen as Jimmy
Brad Pitt as JD

SYNOPSIS
Meek housewife Thelma (Geena Davis) joins her friend Louise (Susan Sarandon), an independent waitress, on a short fishing trip. However, their trip becomes a flight from the law when Louise shoots and kills a man who tries to rape Thelma at a bar. Louise decides to flee to Mexico, and Thelma joins her. On the way, Thelma falls for sexy young thief J.D. (Brad Pitt) and the sympathetic Detective Slocumb (Harvey Keitel) tries to convince the two women to surrender before their fates are sealed
''I just wanted to write about two women on the screen that we haven`t seen before,'' Khouri says. ''I was intrigued with women outlaws. I thought it would be interesting to do women outlaws that were not involved in prostitution, who were not exploited. Generally even when you see women as criminals, like ''The Grifters,'' they`re still playing this sex-object role. I wanted to see something different.''
screenwriter Callie Khouri, quoted in the Chicago Tribune

The Trailer

​“They have already been let down by and left out of the American dream. They go on the road to have a holiday from their normal lives, but the patriarchy is wherever they go, and their lack of middle-class femininity will only make their confrontation with the police – the ultimate symbol of institutional authority – worse. They have no way out.”

Shelley Cobb, film professor (quoted in The Independent)

Justification for Study
Aside from awards recognition, the film had a wide-ranging impact at the time of release, and continues to be recognised as a landmark film. Each significant anniversary is met with think-pieces and reflections on the film, its impact and whether society has changed since its release.
"Extracinematically, Thelma & Louise has been used as a statement of female empowerment and self-assertion and also as a warning of the perceived dangers of female access to violence... By representing women as both victims and agents of violence, Thelma & Luise broke new ground in mainstream American representation, profoundly threatening masculinist critics who objected to its break of the norm of violence as male privilege." - Bernie Cook, Thelma & Louise Live!

The background to making the film
Lister to this podcast by the excellent Stephen Benedict and make notes on how the film came to be and why it is considered significant.

Questions
1. In which year did Callie Khouri begin writing her screenplay for this film?
2. What are the reasons why this film might not get made today?
3. Of the Top 10 films of the US box office in 1988, how many had a female in the lead role?
4. In the Top 50 for 1988, how many had females in the two lead roles?
5. Of those Top 50 films, how many was written solely by a woman?
6. What inspired Khouri to write the story?
7. Which was the only film studio not to reject the film?
8. Who was the head of this studio and approved the film?
9. Name two directors who rejected the chance to direct.
10. Which actress advised Ridley Scott to direct the script himself?
11. How was the film received on its release?
12. Summarise why Benedict thinks the films is “essential viewing” today.
13. Before Callie Khouri's Oscar win for Best Screenplay, in which year was the previous time a woman won this award?
14. What is the final piece of advice that Khouri gives to screenwriters? 

Context and Relevance
The #metoo and #timesup movements of recent years highlights how this film and the experiences of its female protagonists remains sadly relevant - this allows modern viewers to observe how little has changed since Thelma & Louise was released in 1991.
Film had been - and remains - a largely male-dominated industry, both in front of and behind the camera. This film therefore offered something empowering and new for female audiences. Hopes were that it would begin a change in how films were made and targeted - but this has been proven not to happen.
​

"There is a lot of debate over the roles of men and women in our society. Audiences that went to see the film got very revved up pro and con. It became and must-see movie because it tapped into something that no other movie was doing but that touched on just about everyone's life."
- Becky Aikman on the 30 Years Later podcast
A list of the 20 highest-grossing films of the 1980s - every film has a male protagonist and all of them were directed by men.

Genre
Thelma & Louise is sometimes referred to as a genre-bending film - as it blends several genres, including the road movie, buddy movie, comedy, drama, outlaw/crime movie and even Western. Director Ridley Scott insists that it is primarily a comedy.
Which road movie conventions does this film include, and which conventions does it subvert?
Road movies, especially American ones, typically focus on male protagonists and the genre itself is tied to the inventions of cinema and of the car - both were created around the same time and American productions of both were like productions lines, especially in the 1930-50s.
Thelma & Louise is seen as a 'feminist road movie', despite being directed by a man. The 'Male Gaze' is subverted, with Brad Pitt's character JD being the focus of the camera's 'Female Gaze' during the love scene. Hollywood films have almost always been made by men and centred on male characters - so this film inverts that, offering something that was quite radical at the time it was released.
Writing in Sight & Sound, Manohla Dargis argues that
​Thelma & Louise is a Western:

"When MGM/UA released Thelma & Louise in 1991, the studio produced promotional trailers that alternately marketed the film as a road movie. a buddy movie, a female friendship film/melodrama, a comedy and an action movie."
Bernie Cook, Thelma & Louise Live!

Feature-length documentary on the Road Movie genre - features spoilers for Thelma & Louise!

The Title
Thelma & Louise may suggest a romantic comedy (such as Frankie & Johnny or Benny & Joon), or a buddy movie (Hana & Alice). 
But perhaps the title is most intended to evoke the spirit of classic outlaw films Bonnie & Clyde or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (a film which uses an iconic freeze frame as the title characters are killed and pass into legend).

 Gender
The film shows men being restricted and women being liberated (albeit constantly obstructed by men). The male characters wait at home for the phone to ring, watching old movies, while the two female protagonists drive on the open road.
Some complaints have been raised that the male characters are broad stereotypes - perhaps this shows male audience members how females have often been represented on screen - as underdeveloped stereotypes.
Writer Khouri has mentioned that there is no male behaviour in the film that she hadn't personally experienced.
For the two main characters, they start with a mother-daughter dynamic, but this inverts as the film progresses. The characters, especially Thelma, get to become their true selves once free from society's constraints.
Inverting typical Hollywood films, the male characters are seen sitting around at home, ordering food and watching movies, while the female characters are active and out on the road. In terms of visual reference, men are often associated with water, while women are linked with dust.

“It’s a totally ludicrous assessment when you look at the long history of violence and misogyny on film. There’s a million examples of women being brutalized for no other reason than somebody enjoys seeing it, which makes the male-bashing thing absolutely insane.”

- screenwriter Khouri on accusations that the film is anti-men
(Washington Post interview, quoted on Consequence.net)
"The film emphasizes at the levels of character, plot and in the visual register of representation that femininity is construct, not essence. It is important to note that, as Louise and Thelma continue their visual, stylistic and gestural transformation away from their construction in the early scene, they do not move away from a construct toward an essence. At the same time as the women cast off symbols of conventional femininity, they take up symbols stereotypically associated with lower-class, white masculinity."
Bernie Cook, Thelma & Louise Live!
Darryl - Thelma's husband
Harlan, who attempts to rape Thelma
J.D. - the hitch-hiker
The obscene truck driver

Race and Class
The two characters are working class women - a waitress and a housewife. They are also both white - how might the response to the film have been had they been wealthy, or Black?

"You get what you settle for."
- Louise Sawyer

Ridley Scott - the director
To create one masterpiece in a career is a notable achievement - Ridley Scott has created two in the classic sci-fi films Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982).
Born in the north of England, Scott went to art school before making his name in advertising - he has made hundreds of TV adverts and didn't make his first film until the age of 40.
Scott's films are highly visual - this is sometimes used as a criticism, as his characters are sometimes said to lack depth due to Scott's focus on the visuals. He uses shafts of light, strong shadows and vivid colour.
Scott's late brother Tony was also a director of note - he made Top Gun and True Romance.

​Still making films in his 80s, Ridley Scott shows no sign of slowing down and has proved a strong influence on modern filmmakers like David Fincher and Christopher Nolan.
Scott's signature fans, smoke and shafts of light - from Blade Runner
Ridley Scott's famous Apple TV advert:

Scott's Visual Style

Ridley Scott - select filmography
1977 - The Duellists
1979 - Alien
1982 - Blade Runner
1991 - Thelma & Louise
2000 - Gladiator
2001 - Black Hawk Down
2005 - Kingdom of Heaven
2012 - Prometheus
2015 - The Martian
2017 - Alien Covenant
​2021 - House of Gucci

Analysing the visual language of Thelma & Louise
Scott aimed to make the film look more majestic" as it went along and as the characters head towards their ultimate fates.

"I wanted even the highway shots to look kind of beautiful" - Ridley Scott (director's commentary track)

Scott (as a foreigner in America) entions that Americana is very new and 'glittery', so aimed for this visual look to the film.

There seem to be three visual schemes in the film.
1) Bluish, high-contrast look to the 'home' scenes.
2) Golden look to the travelling shots.
​This contrast of the two locations helps further the glum seriousness of home and the free warmth of being on the road.
3) Mythic feel to the final sequence, including backlighting to create a 'halo' around characters - slightly hyper-real. The characters become mythical.

While the films is set on the open road for much of the run-time, Scott often frames the women and their car with machinery or with images of masculinity. At one point, this includes a man working out with dumbbells at the side of the road!
​
"The director (Ridley Scott at his most visual) deftly contrasts Louise's neat kitchen with Thelma's fridgefull of half-eaten Snickers bars, as well as their variant styles of packing suitcases."
"Much attention is given to landscape; the imitation Hollywood motels off the highways; a conglomerate of oil wells in dusty twilights; and faces of aged, displaced people, seen briefly in doorways and windows, remnants of lost dreams (particularly for Louise, who notices them). The eternal desert monoliths add to the isolated status of the women's flight toward the border."
- Albert Johnson, Film Quarterly

As they escape, when the film truly hits the road, the promise of space and freedom lures them on. But the camera still continues to stress the choking inevitability of the world they are trying to escape, not just the massive machinery, oil drilling equipment, and trucks that constantly threaten to squeeze them out of our vision, but even the seemingly more benevolent spaces and spires of John Ford's Monument Valley.
In Thelma & Louise , with its female duo of friends, there is a more intense dialectic of enclosure and openness. The sense of fate is qualified by an almost exact existential luxuriance in knowing that fate and facing it.
- Lou Braudy, Film Quarterly
THELMA & LOUISE presents a high-contrast visual style that employs atmospheric lighting effects emblematic of Scott’s hand: silhouettes, backlit interiors rendered with a cold, cerulean daylight, smoke, lens flares, and surging neon.  Harsh orange sunlight radiates over dramatic desert vistas populated by Scott’s signature attention to detail
     - analysis by Cameron Beyl
An interesting shot from the motel, just after the incident and just before they hit the road.
"Huge tractor-trailer trucks speed down the highway, trains shoot across the screen, a crop-dusting plane zooms overhead. These images make it clear that Thelma and Louise are on the lam in a man's world. The most revelatory aspect of this film is its unmistakably female point of view, and a tractor-trailer thundering by their car evokes a truth known to every woman. Whether she's on the road, in the subway or anywhere else in public life, she's treading on male territory. Men set the tone, men are at the controls."
- Newsweek, 1991
"Are they feminists, or just imitation men? That's a more pertinent question. Thelma and Louise do employ some well-known male techniques of self-assertion; but after all, this is an emergency. What triumphs in the end isn't guns or whisky, it's their hard-won belief in themselves and the soaring victory that belief makes possible. The fearless driving, the exhilaration even amid a sense of doom, the unruly hair and the dust on their sunburned faces are all images that turn these women into genuine giants of the big screen. Of course they're feminists, but not because they have pistols tucked into their jeans. This is a movie about two women whose clasped hands are their most powerful weapon."
​ - Newsweek magazine, 1991

Image Gallery

Pathetic fallacy - dark clouds on the horizon

Mise-en-scene: Costume
Observe how the appearance of the two characters changes as the film goes along, reflecting their character arcs. At one point, Thelma starts to apply lipstick but throws it away. Louise exchanges her rings (including her engagement ring) for a cowboy hat. What do these symbollise?
The women also take or steal clothes from the men they encounter along the way. What does this mean?

"I feel really awake. I don't recall ever feeling this awake. You know? Everything looks different now. You feel like that? You feel like you got something to live for now?"
    - Thelma
 Picture
Seen towards the end of the film, Thelma's t-shirt reads "Driving my life away"

Mise-en-scene: The Car
A green Ford 66 Thunderbird, convertible, Louise's car symbollises freedom. It is also a safe, confessional space where the two friends learn more about each others' lives, and begin to transform.
Louise keeps it spotlessly clean (like her apartment).
​
​Yet, the car is also highly distinctive and the choice of car ultimately means that the women are found by the police.

"The car in a way becomes the dream vehicle. In a way it was Louise's pride and joy. She has no kids or family...her car is meticulously cherried. She probably goes over it with kleenex and a toothpick." Ridley Scott on the T&L audio commentary track.
​
The production filmed with four cars that had new engines.

The music of Thelma & Louise
As with many films, the choice of songs has deep significance, ripe for analysis. An excellent chapter in the book Thelma & Louise Live! analyses and contextualises the use of songs.
​
"The use of pop music conforms to the same sorts of dramatic functions erved by orchestral scores; it underlines character traits, suggests elements of character development or point of view, reinforces aspects of the film's setting and supports the film's structure by bridging spatial and temporal gaps between sequences" (Jeff Smith)

Aside from Hans Zimmer's memorable music score, there are 18 songs featured in the film. Many of the lyrics - and titles - underline key character moments and developments

The first four songs are sung by women. Wild Night plays when the women are getting ready for their trip.
I Don't Wanna Play House can be read as a rejection of traditional roles.
Badlands shares a title with a road movie where a couple go on the run as outlaws.
As the film reaches its end, four titles all have significance. I Can See Clearly Now, played as the cyclist approaches the police car, comes soon after Thelma decides that she can never go back to her old life.
Don't Look Back and No Looking Back follow this on, while Don't Look Down can relate to the final moments of the film.

Perhaps the most significant song choice is The Ballad of Lucy Jordan in a version performed (perhaps with deep significance, given her own troubled life) by Marianne Faithfull. How do the words of this song link to the lives of the title characters of the film?
Just prior to the song playing, Thelma says "I always wanted to travel, I just never got the opportunity." Louise replies "You got it now!"
The song plays while the women drive to Monument Valley at nighttime.

The Ballad of Lucy Jordan lyrics

[Verse 1]
The morning sun touched lightly on
The eyes of Lucy Jordan
In a white suburban bedroom
In a white suburban town
As she lay there 'neath the covers
Dreaming of a thousand lovers
'Til the world turned to orange
And the room went spinning round

[Chorus]
At the age of thirty-seven
She realised she'd never ride
Through Paris in a sports car
With the warm wind in her hair
So she let the phone keep ringing
And she sat there softly singing
Little nursery rhymes she'd memorised
In her daddy's easy chair

[Verse 2]
Her husband, he's off to work
And the kids are off to school
And there are, oh, so many ways
For her to spend the day
She could clean the house for hours
Or rearrange the flowers
Or run naked through the shady street
Screaming all the way

[Chorus]
At the age of thirty-seven
She realised she'd never ride
Through Paris in a sports car
With the warm wind in her hair
So she let the phone keep ringing
As she sat there softly singing
Pretty nursery rhymes she'd memorised
In her daddy's easy chair

[Verse 3]
The evening sun touched gently on
The eyes of Lucy Jordan
On the roof top where she climbed
When all the laughter grew too loud
And she bowed and curtsied to the man
Who reached and offered her his hand
And he led her down to the long white car
That waited past the crowd

[Chorus]
At the age of thirty-seven
She knew she'd found her heaven
As she rode along through Paris
With the warm wind in her hair
'Hearing Thelma & Louise' by Claudia Gorbman, from Thelma & Louise Live!
THELMA & LOUISE'S SONGS
Picture
​
Other interpretations consider that Lucy suicides once on the rooftop, and the later lines refer to the Afterlife. Does this make God the man who offers his hand?

Cultural Impact & Legacy of Thelma & Louise
The film had an enormous cultural impact upon release, with women appreciating its message. The film drew criticism too, with some articles criticising the film for its portrayals for the lead characters (complaining that they took on male characteristics) and for showing the male characters as broad stereotypes.

The film was hoped to be a new beginning for more female-centred American cinema - but this legacy didn't happen as hoped, despite its success. Much reflection on the film considers why not.

​30 years after the film's release, little has changed in American cinema.
​
Much debate on the film focuses on why female audience members responded so strongly to the film - it elicited cheers and celebration from those who saw it at the time. Within a month, the film featured on the cover of TIME magazine with articles discussing its controversial storyline and representations of male characters.

"Here is a film that reveals a sad decline in American culture, with its facile acceptances of empty pleasures and demoralized sexual chauvinism toward women.

Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider and Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Black-Top  displayed the male attraction for a wayward, motorized sort of outlaw wandering across America, with freedom of highways correlated to a promise of adventure and, most of all, hedonistic fun.

The heroines of Thelma & Louise offer the same thing, but with the pathetic fallacy of American open spaces mainly representing precursors of doom beyond desire."

- Albert Johnson, Film Quarterly


Cartoon from The New Yorker, 1991:
The full article from TIME magazine, 1991:

The Ending
Although other ideas were discussed, the ending of Thelma & Louise stayed as scripted and became iconic. While their fate is sad, the film freezes before they fall, making it seem almost as if they ascend rather than fall.

What does the ending say about the position of women in the modern world?

In the words of film critic Angelia Jade Bastien (pictured right), speaking on the Next Picture Show podcast episode on Thelma & Louise, "unruly women are not allowed to exist in this world".
​
An alternative ending can be seen on YouTube and was tested - showing them fall had a very different effect on the audience and on the tone of the ending, although Roger Ebert reacted very strongly to the final shots that followed the freeze frame, even docking the film half a star in his review as he felt these shots from earlier in the film detracted from the ending's impact.
As with other key film scenes, it has been parodied and referenced many times, in advertising, other films and in music videos. Below are some examples.

“It wasn’t meant to be a literal ending. It was them kind of flying off into the mass unconscious. We purposely did not show the smoke coming up from the bottom of the canyon or the car tumbling down the side of the canyon. It was like they were flying away. In so many ways, the movie was a half-full, half-empty glass of water test. There are people who say, ‘How could you have killed them?! I can’t believe it!,’ and there are people that go, ‘They got away! They flew away!’

Callie Khouri on the ending (quoted on Consequence.com)


​Film critic Angelica Jade Bastien:

Further reading on the ending of Thelma & Louise
Vulture: 101 Best Movie endings (T&L is #55)
Classic Rock magazine: Nine parodies of the ending
"If you're threatened by this movie, you're identifying with the wrong person"
- star Geena Davis (Thelma)

Further Reading
Vanity Fair: Ride of a Lifetime - how the film was made
Newsweek: 1991 article - Women Who Kill Too Much
The Guardian: The groundbreaking road movie that still strikes a nerve at 30
Hollywood Reporter on the 30-year reunion
BBC: Thelma & Louise stars recall male backlash to film 30 years on
Film Quarterly: Series of e-articles from the 1991 issue on this film
Washington Post: 25 Years ago, Thelma & Louise was a radical statement - sadly, it still is
​The​ Atlantic: Thelma & Louise - the last great film about women
TIME magazine: 25th anniversary article on the film's context
Dazed: Dissecting the feminist legacy of Thelma & Louise​
​The Ringer: Masculinity in Thelma & Louise 
The Take: How T&L connects to feminist film theory (SPOILERS!)
Vox: Thelma and Louise's enduring appeal — and failure to change Hollywood
The Gallyry: How Thelma & Louise paved the way for female empowerment
ABC News: 'Thelma & Louise' Turns 25: Looking Back at the Most Feminist Scenes in the Movie
ScreenTakes - interactive website analysing the screenplay of Thelma & Louise
The Guardian's interview with Geena Davis: "T&L changed everything for me"
Chicago Tribune: Screenwriter Callie Khouri answers criticisms
The Independent on 30 years of the film: Thelma & Louise: The film that gave women firepower, desire and complex inner lives​
NPR interview with Callie Khouri, 20 years later
Cameron Beyl's analysis of the film
MOMA's Reverse Shot: Very good analysis of the film
Consequence.com interview with screenwriter Callie Khouri

Analysis: Gender, Genre, and Myth in Thelma and Louise
American Studies Journal's extended analysis: “Wanted Dead or Alive”: The Female Outlaw and Callie Khouri’s Thelma and Louise
Thelma & Louise Live!.pdf
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