For
one of the first times ever, Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise
broke the barrier of conventional filmmaking by using female characters as the lead
centerpiece for driving the plot of a story forward rather than the predominantly
used male centric character. For
instance, in many earlier films women were viewed as more of a minor role in
comparison to men. However, the
roles had been switched in Thelma &
Louise. The focus of each shot
was solely on the women characters; for example, after Louise, Susan Sarandon,
said her goodbyes to Jimmy, Michael Madsen, at the hotel restaurant, the camera
remained centered on Louise, establishing a shot of her reaction as well as
emotional state of mind. When
Jimmy left the shot, the camera did not switch to him, or cut to his reaction
shot, away from Louise, simply because the shot would be somewhat irrelevant. The moment was about Louise, not Jimmy,
so to speak. Jimmy was mostly used
as “the other” or “the outsider” in this female-dominant storyline (Giannetti
476). So too was the character
J.D., played by Brad Pitt. The
story never broke off from the women to focus on the men. Before this, women
were considered the so-called “other.”
In the Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid, the focus was on the male leads. While the two films sound similar in their overall concept
and effect, the ideology and meaning are two separate entities. Both films have their own unique touch
on society from both a female and male perspective.
Within
the opening shot of the film, there
was instantly a moment of mise en scene, which helped present the overall
notion of the film. In this case, the empty dirt road symbolized the long
road ahead for both Thelma and Louise.
The road only led straight toward the base of the mountain, indicating
an upward climb, a near impossible climb, in fact, suggesting the characters
ultimate entrapment. In addition to the transition from black and white
to color, mentioned in the clip notes, the metaphor brought forth the idea that
imprisonment was viewed as black and white, while color was fulfillment and
freedom. It may have been there to display the female leads steady
progression from closed to open-minded, the idea of letting go. The shot
was a symbol for the staging of events throughout the film’s entirety. Following that, the camera faded to
black, and then faded into the diner scene. It remained at a long shot, another instance of mise en
scene, and then the camera dollied right to establish the focus on the character
of Louise. The crowded and fast-paced
movement of people in the restaurant illustrated the hectic lifestyle of
Louise.
From
a standpoint of editing, the film was mainly a combination of cutting to
continuity and classical cutting, mixing a variation of cuts between long, medium,
and close-up shots. Many times,
cutting became more frequent in the action sequences, but then the cuts dwindle
during the film’s dialogue scenes and whatnot. In other words, the cutting was made when necessary. If the non-action oriented scenes used
fast cuts the image would be both disruptive and jarring to the focus of the
narrative. The editing avoided
much of the thematic montage style too, as seen in Citizen Kane and The Graduate. There was, however, some cross-cutting
for a time being as Thelma and Louise were packing for their trip. Thelma’s statement, "I always
wanted to travel, I just never got the opportunity," referenced to the
cross-cutting sequence (Thelma & Louise 1991). Thelma looked
completely helpless and unaware as to how she should pack. Rather than
fold cloths neatly, she threw them into her luggage carelessly. Part of
the reason for doing so was probably because Thelma was preoccupied with pleasing
her husband most of time. She did
not really understand how to do certain things because she was never really
able to, like, for instance, packing for a vacation. Louise, on the other
hand, had a sense of independence, and nothing really weighted her down as much
as Thelma. Even though she had a relationship
to Jimmy, she seemed organized and not as entrapped. She had to depend on herself more than Thelma ever had. In the beginning of the film Thelma was
dressed up with clothing and makeup, while Louise had her hair tied up and she
dressed like an older woman. By
the end, though, Thelma quit worrying about looking nice, as she would have had
to with her husband, and let herself free. Same with Louise, she transitioned from a near elderly look
to more of a youthful one, letting her hair down and wearing less formal
clothing. The clothing was the
sign of their change in attitude.
The
film’s camera work had a tendency to come off as formalistic, however, in terms
of story it tended to lean toward realism. Most of the camera work consisted of aerial, crane, and
dolly shots with little use of pans and zooms like in many films of the 1970s
and 1980s. In the scene on the road,
the first camera placement was on the hood of the convertible for establishing
close-ups of each character, while the other various shots were filmed from a
separate vehicle, used to create a dolly shot in order to follow alongside the
action. The camera panned from left to right to left again as the
convertible passed. The straight
shot was not placed on the hood of the convertible as with the close-up shots,
but from another vehicle in front of the two actresses. Spliced in
between these shots was a quick cut to a point-of-view shot as the convertible
moved closer to the semi-truck.
"The
Ballad of Lucy Jordan" by Marianne Faithful reflected the progressive
growth within the characters of Thelma and Louise. At first, the viewers
saw these two women bottled up by stereotypical roles in society, only to
eventually let go of it all for temporary fulfillment and joy. The lyrics
closely relate to Thelma's situation, more so, than Louise's because Thelma had
finally broken from her imprisonment, metaphorically speaking, in which her
husband had kept her in. Thelma never really experienced much, considering
the fact that she had only been with Darryl, Christopher McDonald, her whole
life. She never really seemed to have broken any rules, but she began to
break away from that restraint as she grew through experience on her road to
self-discovery. The entire scene
was filmed in pitch black. Just
the headlights of the convertible shine ahead, meaning they could only go in
one direction, almost like the road to eternity. They could not turn back to face what they had done without
punishment. The steep
mountains surrounding them signaled the world looking down upon them. They lost ground the further they went,
and it became less likely that they could, somehow, climb out of the situation
they put themselves into.
The
“Traveling to the End” scene showed a long shot, and then went to a close-up,
180-degree rule just as Thelma began a dialogue with Louise. The next shot was set at a high angle,
aerial shot where the camera then panned from the convertible to the
helicopter. A steady zoom put an
emphasis on the helicopter.
The shot overlooking the cliff painted the idea of being trapped and
vulnerable. The low-angle shot
added to the feeling of helplessness, entrapment, and vulnerability as it
towered over Thelma and Louise.
So, with the final moment of the film established, two separate shots
used mechanical distortion of movement.
The first was the shot of Hal, Harvey Keitel, as he ran at the camera in
slow motion. The slow motion
suggested that Hal did not know what to do or how to react in the ensuing
moment when Thelma and Louise drove off the cliff; he wanted to save them. The second distortion of movement was
when the car drove off the cliff, and then freeze-framed. The strategy left viewers with the
notion that Thelma and Louise fate ended in death without having to display the
image. One of the commentaries
mentioned that the producer did not want the ending to be too sad, so it was better
to not actually show them die, but rather present an interpretation of what may
have happened. The jump scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid compared to the one in Thelma & Louise created a different
mood. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid scene
was comical, while Thelma & Louise’s was
depressing. Consequently, the
latter had to feel like that because it was the conclusion to the story. There was no realist way for a good
ending, considering the events that unfolded. Both films used the freeze-frame because the viewers did not
want to see the characters, in which they came to love, die.
Works Cited
Giannetti,
Louis. Understanding Movies. 11th ed.
Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall,
2008. Print.
Thelma & Louise.
Dir. Ridley Scott. Perf. Susan
Sarandon and Geena Davis. Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer (MGM),
1991. Film.
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