The Insightful World of Ridley Scott



Thelma and Louise, Alien, Prometheus

There are some characters in movies that are like a ray of reason in an otherwise senseless world. Hal Slocumbe, Chief Investigator, Homicide, Arkansas State Police, is one of them. Hal, played with such natural grace by the brilliant Harvey Keitel in Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise, comes into these women’s lives as they reach their dramatic end and yet, paradoxically, he is the only man that truly understands them and their plight; what’s more, he feels it.  As he confesses to one of the disastrous men that crosses these women’s paths: I may be the only person in the world who gives a rat’s ass what happens to them.

I like to believe that Hal is Ridley Scott himself and that his insight into women is what has made this director so very unique. Scott has been a favorite director of mine for many years and for many reasons. I love that he moves from genre to genre with such ease, directing science fiction, drama, action, romance, or horror movies. I love his creativity and innovation; the wonder of movies like Blade Runner that, thirty one years after its release, is still a science fiction and humanistic thriller at its very best. But I particularly like this director’s awareness of women, his refusal to stereotype them, his search for comprehension; his admiration.

Women  in Ridley Scott’s movies are strong, intelligent, resourceful and humane, whether they are the main character, like Ripley in Alien, filmed in 1979, or Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus, filmed in 2012, or not. Even when they are not the main character, they are women to contend with and remain central to the story line, like Angela in Matchstick Men, Rachael, Pris and Zhora in Blade Runner, Sibylla in Kingdom of Heaven, Marion Loxley in Robin Hood,  or Lucilla in Gladiator.  The female actors that appear in Ridley Scott’s films are among the best in their profession, including Susan Sarandon, Kat Blanchet, Sigourney Weaver, Noomi Rapace, Gena Davis, Sean Young, Darryl Hannah, Marion Cotillard, Eva Green and more.

But it is in Thelma and Louise that Ridley Scott displays his comprehension of women and their situation unlike any other male director has before and few have since. As these two women spiral to their death, one of cinema’s most moving deaths ever, they are met, right and left, with men that only do them harm. Their stories are everyday stories of women drowning in a world of sexism. No science fiction here.  The men portrayed represent millions like them.

Thelma’s husband, Darryl, is a man for whom she is nothing more than a maid he has become bored with.  When she’s on the run, he cares less for her and her safety than does Hal, the police assigned to the case; as Thelma says to Louise after her call to her husband: Darryl is mad, but he's still watching the game.

There’s Louise’s boyfriend, Jimmy, who probably loves her, but has never committed to the relationship before, and only does so because he knows she is leaving him:  I never made it work. He says,  I just... It's not that I don't love you.  It's not that.  I just never thought I'd be thirty-six years old and I never thought... I don't know what I thought.  Louise responds to him that his timing couldn’t have been worse; so much the case too many times. And those are the two men they are in a relationship with, the ones who, supposedly, love them.

Then there are the ones who don’t, like Harlan, the man who tries to rape Louise because she drank and danced with him in a bar; there’s the unknown stranger who actually raped Louise in her past in Texas, traumatizing her for good. There’s the “innocuous” J.D., the handsome hitchhiker, (Brad Pitt in the role that put him on the map), who robs them of all their money. All the men that, ultimately, drive them to a point of no return.

Harvey Keitel in Thelma and Louise

As Hal says to the lead FBI agent at the end of the movie: how many  times, Max?  How many times has that woman gotta be fucked over?  You could lift one finger and save her ass and you won't even do that?  In that scene, Hal tries to get between the guns and the women, desperately trying to save their lives at the expense of his own.

Ultimately, the question that comes to mind is whether it is only in science fiction that Ridley Scott sees women emerging as victors over their own destinies.  We’ll have to wait and hope Scott comes up with a movie where an everyday woman, in the present, does so. In the mean time we will say, with the lead character in Prometheus:  My name is Elisabeth Shaw, last survivor of the Prometheus. And I am still searching.