Re-Pondering the Ending of ‘Thelma and Louise’

Welcome to The Queue — your day by day distraction of curated video content material sourced from throughout the online. At present, we’re watching a video essay that explores the controversial ending of “Thelma and Louise.”

From time to time, you come throughout repeated visible concepts in cinema; echoes of the identical feeling, picture, and intent that really feel associated indirectly.

There have been a lot of triumphant airborne escapes throughout film historical past. Elliott’s triumphant bicycle escape in E.T. the Additional-Terrestrial springs to thoughts; so iconic that it grew to become the emblem for Amblin Leisure. Or Bastian chasing down bullies aboard Falkor on the finish of The NeverEnding Story.

The liberty flight that concludes Thelma & Louise is equally triumphant, however with a notable twist. Particularly (and satirically), that its titular dynamic duo’s flight can also be a stunning option to embrace demise reasonably than captivity. The ending, all these years later, nonetheless smacks of a sure diploma of tragic camp. And we’ve all seen the scene reproduced and parodied to the purpose the place each its downbeat energy and its exhilarating edge have been misplaced within the sauce, so to talk.

Enter: Gestalt psychology, the concept putting issues beside each other creates an entire greater than the sum of its components. Under you’ll discover a video essay that units the ending of Ridley Scott’s 1991 traditional alongside different iconic scenes of characters escaping into the sky. Take pleasure in, and don’t overlook your parachutes.

Watch “Unbelievable Dialogisms or the Artwork of Flying”

Who made this?

The above video essay on the difficult ending of Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise is by Barbara Zecchi. Raised in Italy, Zecchi is a Professor and Director of the Movie Research Program on the College of Massachusetts Amherst, a movie scholar, movie critic, and video essayist. You’ll be able to try her work on Vimeo right here.

Extra movies like this

• For an additional style of Zecchi’s work, right here’s her video essay that queers the already outrageously camp traditional Gents Want Blondes.
• Zecchi has additionally created content material for Ariel Avissar’s “TV Dictionary” collection. Right here’s her have a look at the 2018–2020 coming-of-age present Child.
• The ending of Thelma and Louise famously features a automobile. Right here’s the always-great Thomas Flight on why a automobile is only a automobile.
• For Leisure Weekly, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis sat all the way down to reminisce in regards to the movie.
• And at last, right here’s Davis on the Graham Norton Present discussing why Brad Pitt was forged in Thelma and Louise.

Associated Subjects: Ridley Scott, The Queue

Meg Shields is the standard farm boy of your desires and a senior contributor at Movie Faculty Rejects. She at the moment runs three columns at FSR: The Queue, How’d They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She can also be a curator for One Good Shot and a contract author for rent. Meg could be discovered screaming about John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ on Twitter right here: @TheWorstNun. (She/Her).