The film Thelma and Louise directed by Ridley Scott is a film about women finding their independence and strength. Thelma is a very submissive housewife who is married to a man that expects this kind of behavior. She is so timid that she is too afraid to even ask him if she can take a trip with her friend Louise so she leaves him a note instead. Louise is already very independent. She supports herself and has her own car, but she is upset that her boyfriend is losing interest in her. She wants to take a trip to make him miss her a little and she doesn’t realize that part of his problem is that she doesn’t need him at all. Shortly after the two women leave on their road trip, they stop at a bar to have a few drinks. A man tries to rape Thelma in the parking lot but he is stopped when Louise shoots him. This causes the two women to go on the run, committing new crimes as they go and become chased by the police who mostly just want to question them. As they run, Thelma grows into her own strength and independence as a woman while Louise learns to depend a little bit on someone else. However, when they’re finally cornered by the police, they chose to drive into the Grand Canyon instead of trying to shoot their way through the blockade or be arrested. An important scene that shows the women’s growth happens when the two women are pulled over in the New Mexico desert by a single police officer who seriously asks Louise to get in his car.
The scene begins with Louise firmly in charge of the situation. She is the driver of the car and the two women are driving along in relative silence. All that is heard is the sound of the car engine. Louise is watching the road and Thelma is mostly just watching the scenery go by. They seem to be pretty much content with life just as it is at that moment. Then the sound of a police siren slowly starts to be heard, louder and louder until Louise looks in the rearview mirror and notices they are being pulled over. Although both women panic a bit, Louise makes the reasoned decision to go ahead and pull over and follows the officer’s instructions on the chance that he is unaware that they are wanted criminals. The moment of indecision in the car shows that Louise is not as totally in control as she appears, but she eventually takes control as she pulls the car over and tries to talk sense into Thelma. However, when the policeman asks her to step back to his car with him, she shoots a panicked look over at Thelma and seems to give up control. This idea is reinforced as she nervously asks the officer which part of the car she should get into and then sits sweating in the front seat as he looks over her paperwork. By the end of the scene, she is almost incapable of acting unless Thelma tells her what to do and Thelma is the one who drives the car away from the captive policeman and his car. Throughout the scene, then, Louise moves from a strongly assertive role where she’s in total control to one in which she is completely passive and finally nothing more than an obedient partner in Thelma’s plan.
In contrast, Thelma starts the scene in her common passive position as passenger in Louise’s car. She has no control over where they’re going, no control over the speed they travel and seems to not even be able to control whether they talk or not. Even though she argues a little with Louise when they see the police car behind them, when they are pulled over she is still in passive mode. This is clear because she attempts to flirt with the police officer in order to get him to let them go on the ticket. She shares Louise’s panicked look when the officer asks Louise to come back to his car with him, but she seems somehow more sure of herself as the camera moves away from her. Thelma goes out of frame as Louise and the officer go back to his car, but then appears relatively quickly in his driver’s side window with a gun, suddenly taking a suddenly very active role in the action. From this point forward in the scene, she takes on the most dominant position among the three characters in the scene. She starts by ordering Louise around and then taking decisive steps to secure their escape. The police officer, traditionally a symbol of male strength and authority, breaks down in front of this strong woman and begs for his life. When the two women jump back in the car at the end of the scene, it is Thelma who takes the driver’s seat. Although Louise reasserts herself by ensuring her gun is fully loaded, she is no longer in control and has found some comfort in allowing someone else to make the decisions.
Although there does not seem to be much to discuss regarding filmographic elements in this scene, there are several hints provided in the acting and photography that suggest the women may have more legal sympathy than they assume. To begin with, the officer asks Louise to get in the front seat rather than placing her in cuffs immediately. He is stern but not hostile and firm but not restrictive. The camera follows Louise and the officer almost exclusively, frequently cutting Thelma out altogether as if this were a matter just between Louise and the law and perhaps just involving the moment. When they get in his car, the lighting is subdued, but after the harsh light of the desert sun, this is more a relief than a sense of something ominous to come, although that also happens as Thelma arrives at the window. Thus, even through the filmic elements, Thelma manages to force herself in on the action and again reinforces a sense of her personal growth.
Through story, filming, acting and lighting, this scene captures the idea of two women discovering themselves as both stronger and more interdependent than they believed. Thelma thought she couldn’t live without permission and approval from her husband but learned that she had strength and the ability to act on her own. Louise believes she can only look to herself to take care of her own welfare but discovers that she can learn to lean on others a little bit and still survive. In the end, the women choose suicide rather than returning to the strictly defined roles they faced back at home.
Works Cited
Thelma and Louise. Dir. Ridley Scott. Perf. Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel & Brad Pitt. MGM, 1991.