Chasing Yellow Lines…

I’m barely 12 years old, squeezed into the family car at dusk as my dad slowly navigates to our perfect knoll at the drive-in movie. This is an annual tradition for us every summer up at our cottage in northern Ontario. It’s 1991 and the night’s selection is called ‘Thelma and Louise’. I won’t get into the darker themes of the movie (which I’m sure you all know), the violence (I don’t see coming), the ending (I really don’t see that coming!), or the way I feel when Brad Pitt, then an unknown actor, saunters onto the screen for the first time (sigh, drool, sigh). What I will describe is the huge impact it has on me to watch two women, best friends, leave their very tightly wound lives to go on a spontaneous road trip together. Their makeup and outfits are perfect as they leave their homes. Not a hair is out of place as they hoist their overpacked bags into the trunk. As they drive away, all of their stresses, responsibilities, tiring jobs, controlling husbands become minuscule and then disappear all together in the rear view mirror. Trouble and trauma ensue as their planned out getaway turns into an unhinged cross country escape. For 130 minutes they drive their vintage convertible all the way from Arkansas, right (in)to the Grand Canyon. Spoiler alert- my burgeoning 12 year old mind explodes right alongside their 1966 turquoise Ford Thunderbird.

Over the course of the movie the “road” becomes the perfect backdrop and catalyst for their ultimate freedom (or demise, depending on how you look at it). Their hair loosens and tangles, windswept, with cheeks sunburnt and freckled. At one point Louise tears her shirt to make a kerchief to tie around her neck. Thelma trades her jewelry for a dirty cowboy hat worn by an ancient, toothless man at a gas station. They unravel till you can’t tell if they’re laughing or crying. As the title suggests, they become completely connected to each other and their ever-changing landscape in an almost spiritual, other-worldly way. There’s one scene near the end when almost all is lost, but they exist in a peaceful, almost transcendental state. Louise is driving all night directly into those mystical, blue-light hours of dawn, weaving through what looks to be the red rocks of Sedona. Thelma gets an expression on her face that only a fully, self-actualized human can get. She says ‘I feel awake’, ‘I’ve never felt so awake’. No more needs to be said. The viewer can completely understand the subtext to these simple words. This scene, and this emotional layer of the movie resonate with me so deeply. Watching this ultimate expression of autonomy becomes a signal to my own soon to be coming-of-age.