![]() ![]() It has left a cartoonish mark on the landscape of pop culture, which is a testament to its brilliance, but the film itself is much more complex than its familiar image. ![]() Everyone from Marge Simpson to Taylor Swift has attempted their own version. Brad Pitt appears in it, with his top off. It has been so regularly spoofed and mimicked that the crude outline of its story should be familiar, even if the film is a distant memory: two women set off on a weekend break, encounter a rapist, shoot him, go on the run, then, rather than hand themselves in, they drive into the Grand Canyon in a blaze of glory. It is one of the only films I still have on DVD, because I can’t bear to be at the whim of a streaming service that may choose to remove it. In subsequent years, that 1966 Thunderbird has been driven into the canon of classic cinema. Were they role models? Was it a feminist parable? Was that ending, one of the few that has truly earned the overused adjective “iconic”, perfect, or a cop-out? In The Last Journey, a 2002 documentary about the making of Thelma & Louise, Sarandon addressed all the noise, and said: “Films at their best should challenge your perspective.” This is film at its best. ![]() Was it, as some critics felt, a thoughtlessly violent movie that saw two women committing terrible crimes in the name of “empowerment”? Were they “acting like men” under the cover of feminism? Or was it in fact misandry, unfair to men, because it portrayed all of its male characters as awful? (Never mind that they are not all awful it’s a pre-hashtag #NotAllMen). Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon appeared on the cover of Time magazine, under the coverline “Why Thelma & Louise Strikes A Nerve” the particular nerve that it struck was much debated. When the film was released in 1991, it unleashed a wave of controversy that seemed to take its cast and crew by surprise. Thelma & Louise has lost none of its bite, even after 30 years. ![]()
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