Thelma & Louise (1991)

This is a loose review (or structured stream of consciousness review, depending on how you wish to look at it) I wrote after watching Thelma & Louise on Halloween during my sophomore year of college for my Philosophy and Film (PHL 324) class. My overall rating was 3 stars out of a possible 4. On my scale, 3 stars qualifies as "good."

Have you ever been stuck on a movie between two ratings? So stuck that you feel like you may go to jail if you don’t assign the correct rating? That maybe you may never be taken seriously again as a film critic if you give a movie a certain rating? For me, the answers are yes (quite often), yes (not quite as often) and yes (even less often). Now, here’s the real question: have you ever been caught between two ratings to the point that you decide that it is not FAIR to give the movie the lower rating and thus give it the higher of the two options? For me, that answer is yes. Once. And this is that one time. When I started this movie, I did not expect to be so torn that I spent twenty minutes after watching it just trying to figure out how many stars to give it. Usually, I have a rating decided by the end of the credits. Not here.

Last year, I said, or more correctly wrote, or even more correctly yet typed that Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) was the most difficult film for me to rate because I had to decide whether revealing the brother’s true colors were both sensible and the smart, correct choice. Eventually I said yes, and while I don’t feel like looking up exactly why I said yes, I have confidently stood by my decision ever since.

Here, it wasn’t so much one character as it was two other factors. Plot-wise, this should be a 2.5 star movie, but that’s not what the film gets in the end, it gets 3 stars. It’s like American Hustle (2013) for me: the plot should yield a 3.5 star film, but there is one element, the voice-over, which pushes the film over the edge into the green pastures of 4-star territory. Here, the reasons for Ridley Scott’s 1991 effort’s promotion is the powerful acting and the phenomenal soundtrack (which I am currently listening to while I type this). There is not a single poor performance or even mediocre performance in this movie. Everyone is acting like their lives depend on it, all the way from Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon as the titular characters to Stephen Tobolowsky as Max, one of the investigating agents and Lucinda Jenney as Lena, the waitress from the roadhouse. With the acting performances alone, this movie should have been 4 stars.

Alas, the film is too polarizing. The first hour is some of the worst in cinema. The second hour is some of the best in cinema. Although the less impressive of the two performances, Davis’ portrayal of Thelma is the reason why the movie does not continue in the path of the first hour. Davis nails Thelma down as the flaky (as Louise describes her), open (as Louise also describes her), far too innocent housewife. The problem is that Davis acts so well that Thelma becomes almost soap opera-esque; it becomes annoying how innocent she is, to the extent that it begins to plague the movie’s quality. It’s not until J.D. (Brad Pitt) robs the heroines (probably not the right term for them, but that’s how the American Film Institute wants to designate the two), that Thelma really wakes up to the world and the film takes a turn. It’s unfortunate that it took an hour and ten minutes for Thelma to fully mature. The debate could have been for this movie to be either 3-star worthy or 3.5-star worthy.

We are now going to shift this review to a reflection of how this movie did at the 64th Oscars, and my thoughts on the nominations it received. Thelma & Louise garnered six Academy Award nominations. For Best Director, I do believe that the Academy was correct in awarding Jonathon Demme for The Silence of the Lambs rather than Ridley Scott for this movie. Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon were both nominated for Best Actress, and I believe that Sarandon was snubbed of a victory by the Academy. While I feel that both actresses were better than winner Jodie Foster, who won for her role as Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, Sarandon was overwhelmingly more impressive than both Davis and Foster. I wasn’t overly taken with the screenplay, but I haven’t seen any of its competition yet for Best Original Screenplay, so I can’t really say for sure whether it was more deserving than at least one of its fellow nominees. The same goes for cinematography, but I think that Adrian Biddle did a fantastic job here, so Robert Richardson's work on JFK must be pretty damn incredible to take the Oscar away from Adrian. The last nomination it received was for film editing, which The Silence of the Lambs also was unsuccessfully nominated for. As I've stated before, I haven't seen JFK yet, but I'd be shocked if its film editing is better than The Silence of the Lambs, which I can comfortably say is better edited than the movie this critique concerns.

There are two more things that I wish to cover in this critique: the feminism side of Thelma & Louise (which I won’t go too excessively into) and the final shot (or more specifically, how I feel about it compared to the late, great Roger Ebert). In terms of feminism, I think that this is a great example of feminist cinema, for which this movie has since been recognized as a landmark work. As a male college student who strongly supports feminism and whose favorite literary novel is also considered a feminist landmark (Kate Chopin's The Awakening - in case you were interested), I enjoyed this movie through the feminist lens and thought that it was very effective in conveying its stance.

Lastly, the final scene. I won't spoil it for anyone that hasn't seen it, but I can say with some assuredness that many trailers, snippets of the movie on TV, parodies, and homages have already done so. The ending is very powerful and was probably my favorite part of the movie because it was so moving and telling of what these two women were stood for. In his review, Roger Ebert lashed out (mildly, mind you), that the ending did not fit, that it needed ten more seconds, give or take, before fading into white. I understand where he’s coming from, but I disagree. To me, it’s the same as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969): immortalize the ending in a picture rather than show the full blown final result. I mean, if you really crave an ending for this movie like the one Roger Ebert wanted, just watch another movie with Stephen Tobolowsky in a minor role.

I'm serious, if this ending upsets you as much as it apparently did Ebert, who claimed that the failure to let the shot continue altered the course of the whole movie, then just stop it before they drive off into the sun, pull up Groundhog Day (1993), and play it from Phil Connors (Bill Murray) and Groundhog Phil revving the engine in the quarry. Actually, you should go one step further and play the audio from Thelma & Louise and mute the audio from Groundhog Day. I guarantee that this will move you to decide that the ending the movie gives you is not only the ending the movie deserves, but the ending that you, the viewer, deserves as well.