This week I finally watched the movie “Thelma & Louise” all the way through.
Almost everyone “knows” the ending, even me: the iconic shot of two women joyously driving their convertible off the edge of the Grand Canyon. I think of that image every time I’m on the top level of Great Neck’s parking garage with no clear signage for how to get back down. Is that what they want me to do? (And don’t tell me “it’s a double helix, of course,” or you will get the same uncomprehending glare I give my husband when he says that.)
But why did Thelma and Louise feel compelled to commit suicide — let alone so brazenly? (And please don’t say “they were driven to it,” like that same not-funny husband!) Was that really the characters’ only option? Was it justified by the plot? Or was it just one director’s idea of a fabulous publicity-generating stunt? I didn’t know, because somehow — in all the years since the film’s release in 1991 — I had never managed to watch the film from beginning to end.
Before I go on please be advised that if, like me until this week, you haven’t seen the movie yet, maybe put this column aside and go do that, as I’ll be indulging freely in spoilers. I think that after 31 years enough time has elapsed.
The film’s tragic conclusion is set in motion early in the film when a man who has danced for much of the night with Geena Davis’ Thelma at a honky-tonk, assaults her once they are out in the parking lot. He gets most of the way toward raping her before Susan Sarandon’s Louise sees this and comes to Thelma’s rescue. She does so with the aid of Thelma’s gun, which she happens to have in her purse. But the man is furious, and unpardonably rude, and when he screams an obscene suggestion at Louise for what she should do for him, she shoots him. She turns out to be an excellent shot: the man is dead.
The women panic, and soon their plan for a weekend getaway has become a headlong flight from the long arm of the law. “Why can’t we just tell the police it was self-defense?” Thelma asks her friend.
“Because he had stopped,” replies Louise, “and we were walking away, and then I shot him. Besides nobody will believe us.”
If I had watched that film back in 1991, I think I would have been skeptical of Louise’s answer. I would probably have felt that the women (whom I would have called “girls” back then) had plenty of options and just didn’t exercise them. But in the years since 1991 I’m afraid we have all seen reason to lose a lot of faith in the criminal justice system in general.
Indeed, I have heard of case after case where a woman is being beaten, or choked, or almost drowned by an abusive man and then acts to defend herself — and she’s the one who ends up in jail.
Most notoriously, there is the case of Marissa Alexander, who in 2010 said she merely fired a warning shot — at the ceiling! — when her abusive husband threatened to kill her. She had a restraining order against the husband (which he was violating), as well as a license for carrying a concealed weapon, she told “The Cut” in 2017, and no one was injured by what she did. To recap, all she did was fire a warning shot into the ceiling. Even so, she was convicted and slapped with a 20-year sentence for “aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.”
This in spite of the fact that her state, Florida, had a “Stand Your Ground” law at the time, which supposedly allowed civilians the use of deadly force in self-defense.
Alexander eventually won a plea deal and finally freedom, thanks to media outcry and national publicity. But this case, and too many like it, made me realize that Thelma and Louise (along with their creator, Oscar-winning scriptwriter Callie Khouri) were probably more correct about the hopelessness of their predicament than I would ever have believed back in 1991.
I am sadder about the world now, and more cynical, than I was 31 years ago. A small silver lining is that now I can see the brilliance of this iconic movie.