After watching Thelma and Louise, I believe that the main point of the movie was to portray two women who were tired of their old lives and how society treated them that they rebelled and ran away. The scene at the beginning of the movie where Thelma first gets into the car with Louise and they talk about why they are leaving demonstrates how desperate they want to get away. Their temporary fun away from their unhappy lives quickly changes when Louis shoots a man. Now the two run for their lives as things slowly get worse and they end up making a drastic decision to continue running forever even if it means death. The point of the movie was also to show how women did not have a chance to defend themselves against the dog eat dog world. Many of the mistakes happened due to Thelma's naive careless nature which end up making the two run for their lives. Although they were internally happy with the results because as women they were finally able to stand up against men, Thelma and Louise were viewed as criminals due to their actions.
The main police officer in charge of catching Thelma and Louise was very lenient on them. At one point of the movie he even looks at a picture of a young girl and says "Happy Birthday little lady". What type of connection does he have with the two women?
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I agree with Julie on some points, but differ in others- Where Julie thinks that the point of the movie was "to show how women did not have a chance to defend themselves against the dog eat dog world", I disagree entirely! I think that this movie demonstrates that anyone can rebel, can stand up for themselves and live outside the law. Look at the transformation that both Thelma and Louise made on their trip! They do begin naive and careless, as Julie pointed out, but they find self confidence when they start standing up for themselves, beginning with the murder at the bar. Terrible as it was, I believe that that may have been the first time in their lives that they had been truly assertive, and we later find out why Louise was so quick to pull the trigger, taking a stand for Thelma and for whatever may have happened to her in Texas.
ReplyDeleteBoth women do things that no one could ever imagine them being capable of doing. Even the waitress at the bar who had met them for minutes thought them incapable of doing something so extreme as murdering someone! And the look of shocked disbelief of Thelma's husbands face as he watched the video of her armed robbery showed just how shocked he was about the transformation.
Julie also mentioned that Thelma and Louise "run for their lives as things slowly get worse and they end up making a drastic decision to continue running forever even if it means death". Are things getting worse? Yes, they dig themselves farther and farther into trouble with the law, but it looks to me like they get happier along the way! To me it seems like they're so far in that they just start to live the life they want to live- for instance, pulling the truck driver over and asking him to apologize. Necessary? Probably not. But as that truck exploded I smiled, thinking about every lewd truck driver that's ever honked at me and I felt a little better too! Also, did they really decide that they would run until they died? I honestly don't think so. I feel like they only made that decision when they had no choice, that or prison. They knew they would never return to their old lives, but I don't think that driving off a cliff was ever in the plans.
What do you think the main point of the movie was? Escape? Self discovery? Rebellion from previous lives?