Film Analysis: Thelma And Louise

Ridley Scott’s film Thelma and Louise implements the themes of friendship, women and feminity, criminality, and freedom and confinement. Similarly, Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-up has a similar theme of freedom and confinement, but delves more into the theme of isolation and the inability to communicate. The films both have main characters that change dramatically from the beginning to the end of the films. In Thelma and Louise, the character who changes the most is Thelma and in Blow-up Thomas changes the most by the end of the film. Both of the films touch on social, cultural, economic, and psychological aspects. Alongside, the films have various influential theoretical frameworks used by Scott and Antonioni. Blow-up and Thelma

Friendship is an obvious theme because the film follows the relationship of the two characters. Both women help each other to discover their worth during their unexpected road trip. They ultimately find their romantic relationships dissatisfying because of the roles they are expected to fulfill as women. Women and feminity is present as soon as Thelma and Louise are free from their regular, daily lives of waitressing and housewife-ing, they are finally free to express themselves. They feel free to reclaim the freedoms that have been denied them and they take revenge on the men that have hurt them by putting themselves and their friendship first. Both females do not follow what the men tell them to do, but rather become the ones who have the upper arm. The theme of criminality becomes clear in Thelma and Louise because the film supports the idea that there is a flaw in the way criminality is defined by the U.S. legal system. According to U.S. law, for example, Louise has committed a homicide by killing Harlan, since Thelma was technically "safe" when she did it. Despite the fact that we, in the audience, are pretty much right there with Louise, the legal system is not set up to pardon her for her actions, quite the opposite. In fact, Louise states right off the bat that nobody will believe their story and that Thelma 's having drunk and cavorted with Harlan will discourage the claim that he attacked her. Louise mentions several times how nobody will believe them, which creates a realization that it is hard to justify the actions one does, mainly a female, to protect them or be