Leaving Normal
“Love doesn’t exist, people just settle,” (Darleen, Leaving Normal). I thought this film was alright but definitely not one of my favorites. Both women, Darleen and Marianne, seemed so unaware and detached from reality. This is especially true of Marianne’s character who acts as though she is still a child and incapable of making positive decisions in her life. I was impressed however, when Marianne leaves her abusive new husband Curt. The film makes you think that this was the first time he hit her but we don’t know that and it can be assumed that he was verbally abusive.
Leaving Normal did very little to include different groups of people and only had characters that were your stereotypical white heterosexuals. There was however, two native boys from Alaska but the perception I got was that they were like animals especially the one who didn’t speak English in the scene where he runs after the mail truck. The father of these two boys was not around because he was in jail which is another big stereotype. Although Darleen finally agreed with Marianne about letting the boys stay on the land who is to say who really owns the land. The piece of paper that says Darleen has the rights was issued by the government who STOLE the land from Natives anyway.
I appreciated the end of this film because it seemed pretty realistic. Overtime, the two women and the two native boys finally built the home that Darleen had assumed was already there. Thankfully, Marianne did not ride off into the night with Harrison the love sap and we never knew if Darleen heard back from her daughter which would be very unlikely as the front desk woman assured her several times.
My favorite road film of all hands down is Thelma and Louise. At the beginning the two characters were practically polar opposites with Louise being witty and tough as a rock and Thelma completely oblivious and delicate. The one thing they did have in common though was the fact that they were both women trying to survive in a white male supremacy. They had to deal with some very difficult interactions, harassment, and abuse based solely on the fact that they were women and they quickly leaned how to look out for and depend on one another.
One moment that I found particularly special was when Louise suggested that the reason they got in trouble with that pervert who tried to rape Thelma was Thelma’s fault. This scene is when they are in the diner after they had shot Harlan. After Louise makes this comment she realizes what she has said yet the damage has already been done to Thelma who shoots back.
Through out the film all the women on the road seem so connected and it is such a powerful thing. For one, the waitress at the bar who knows Harlan speaks of his death as something that should have happened long ago and how she rooted that it had been his own wife because after all, he totally had it coming. The end when Thelma and Louise decided to go over the cliff is very inspirational because the two women prove that they are not afraid and they are not about to give themselves up especially when it means that they might spend the rest of their lives locked up in some jail cell under another ruler but just in another form.