Nicole White Thelma and Louise

   

                When I first started watching Thelma and Louise, I thought it would be hard for me to get through this whole movie. As the movie progressed, I actually ended up really enjoying this movie. The camera angles were excellent as well as the use of lighting.

            I first wanted to start by pointing out the use of parallel editing in the scene where we see the two girls packing for a weekend getaway. When they show Louise packing, we see a woman packing very carefully. She packs enough clothes for what she feels she will need. Everything is placed so neatly in the suitcase. As we see around her house, everything is also very neat and tidy. As for Thelma, we see a very messy house, with things all over the place. When Thelma is packing, everything seems to be in disarray. She is throwing as many things as she can fit into her suitcase. We even see her at one point dumping one of her drawers into her suitcase. I feel it was a way her basically knowing she wasn’t coming back after this vacation. This scene really foreshadows what we see of the two girls in the scenes to come.

            After watching the whole film and putting all the pieces together, it all made sense to me. Louise was always the one having to look after Thelma. Thelma was the one who had gotten them into trouble in the first place. One line really stuck out to me was when Thelma said to Louise that she was just “letting her hair down.” Thelma reminds me of the one friend who always gets way too out of control and you always have to keep your eye out for them. Louise from the start could see the danger in Harlan and didn’t want anything to do with it, while Thelma kept flirting with him all night. We can see that Louise is the one who has her head on straight while Thelma wanted to break free from her horrible life at home and have fun. We see another instance where Thelma leaves J.D. alone in the room, they come back to find all their money to be gone. Thelma doesn’t think before she acts, which is why these two were in so much trouble.

            Throughout this movie, we see the role these women played begin to change drastically. They both started out as the pure women. When they left for the trip, they were both wearing white outfits and dressed very girly, with their hair done nicely, and a lot of make up on. As the movie progressed, as the woman turned bad, we saw their outfits change into more manly outfits. They started dressing real rough.

               When Daryll was speaking with the cops, he told them that she took the gun from the side drawer by their bed. I remembered Hal saying about the gun, “but he said she'd never touch it, wouldn't learn to shoot it, just left it in a drawer for years.” This especially stuck out to me because here we have a woman who wouldn’t touch the gun, to all of a sudden packing it for when they go away for the weekend. To me, this signifies her taking the control of the relationship. She is taking matters into her own hands now. I had to laugh at remembering her when she first showed Louise the gun; she told her she had to keep it because she didn’t even know how to use it. Then we get to the end of the field to see a girl who looked like she’s been doing it her whole life.

               This film has been known as the feminist film of the decade. We see these women taking the roles that you would usually see a man playing. These women go from being sweet and innocent to taking authority and gaining a lot of confidence. All of the trouble these women got into was because of men. They ended up trying to run from the law. One of my favorite scenes of this movie was the last time they ran into the pervert truck driver and had him pull over. These women don’t want to be talked to that way and made speechless when talking about men talking to his mother, wife, sister, etc like that. The pull the gun out on him and I thought for sure he would apologize. When he didn’t they took complete control and shot at his truck, eventually blowing it up. They were so confident in this scene and stood up for the way men talk to women.

               Lastly, I found the road to symbolize their freedom. The women seemed to only get into trouble whenever they were stopped somewhere. The women were free from their terrible boyfriend or husband. They were free from everything that men did to them.

               I felt the use of the cameras were excellent. We see the use of aerial shots to show the long road whenever the women were driving. We also see the use of reverse shots when the women were on the phone; this allowed us to see the two different locations. When the police were chasing the women, we saw a pan across the scene to show all of them surrounding the women. Throughout the film, we saw the use of many over the shoulder shots during conversations, as well as a lot of close ups, to show the emotions of the characters. The movie ended with a freeze frame when the women were driving over the Grand Canyons. It eventually leads to a fade to an all-white scene.

               Since this movie was shot mainly outdoors, I didn’t notice a whole bunch of lighting techniques. However, I did notice many scenes which were somewhat dark. First, when we see Thelma’s house, everything seemed so dark. When we go to the bar, the women seemed to be sitting in almost complete darkness. I think this was showing us that these women were turning to the dark side, because it was here where everything changed for them. Lastly, I noticed when Louise was talking to the officer on the phone; the area was very dark around her. She had completely shifted to the dark side at this point, running from the law.