Ridley Scott is one of the best and most prolific filmmakers of our time. This film is no exception. Every frame is crafted in order to reveal the story fully, moment to moment for the audience to be engrained with the life of what Thelma and Louise are going through. Scott films the attempted rape of Thelma by Harlan in a way that is horrifying, because it shows the violence and rage as well as the inhumanity of the act. We watch as Louise stands over Harlan's body after killing him and the shot reveals who she is. It shows us, as we later learn, that Louise was raped and that horrible act remains with her. Thus her standing over Harlan strikes a resemblance of her standing over her rapist, finally getting revenge.
To add to these shots, Scott further embeds the imagery with shots that expose the reality of the world these women live in: one where men take what they want from women. This is clearly seeen when the truck driver pulls over to have sex with Thelm and Louise. His truck represents a phallus so, when the women blow it up it is a clear statement of the fact that they don't play by the warped rules this man has created for himself in the world.
Scott's film is on point with each sequence, and as with most of his films, the pacing carries the viewer along in the story with the characters to the very end. And the end here is Thelma and Louise driving off the Grand Canyon. We see a push in shot of their hands united together as a photograph flies out of the car, and the Thunderbird they drive pauses in mid-air as the film cuts to the end. Their journey is suspended in our memories. This film lives on because of Ridley Scott's ability technically to capture the story, and to poetically tell it through images.
