CydM at 2013-06-08 22:11:31:

I had to read this a couple of times and think a bit. Early on Louise calls Thelma "sister," and that's easily seen as a close connection between two women. Here in the Bible belt it's a term used by mothers in addressing their female children as a term of endearment. I saw nothing similar in these two women at the beginning and wondered why they'd be friends considering themselves as sisters. Thelma is messy and flighty while Louise is rigid and keeps things tightly under control (common consequence of significant trauma). I think Louise is looking at Thelma as a little wild child she has to control, perhaps that wild child she used to be that got her raped in Texas. Maybe. That could be a stretch. What sticks out after going through it a couple times is the dust. Thelma's got that one sign of her brazen former self -- that flashy green car -- and for most of their journey they're bookin' it and there's always dust behind them. They're literally shaking off the dust, until all the patrol cars surround them at the moment when they have just one choice to make. At that point, when the police cars come to an abrupt halt, the dust flies around the two women. As they're driving off the cliff, the script says "a cloud of dust blows through the frame." B.B. King sings "don't look down, just fly." The quote you've pulled out made by Thelma of having something to look forward to is answered by Louise with her saying, "All I feel is busy." She's been frozen in her nightmare of trauma, but now she's breaking through and getting busy -- she's an active participant in her own life. The last shot of her before they come up against that final moment has Louise with her head thrown back, the lines of her face showing, and finally taking in the sun. And shortly before that when they shoot up the truck, she's finally able to say she learned to shoot in Texas. She's finally at peace with the past, and it took losing everything she had to lose to get it. Arkansas is also a place where people go to get lost (there was a reference to this in Grey's Anatomy). Coupled with Louise's ability with a gun and her tight control of everything, it makes me wonder if she hadn't killed someone before because nobody believed her, or wished she had and never came to terms with that part of herself. Thelma lives in a fantasy world. She says something about Linda Blair going through so much when it's the characters she plays who go through so much. Louise is the one who needs a little bit of crazy, a little bit of fantasy so she can kick up some dust and leave us knowing but not knowing if she dies or just keeps flying as everyone else chokes on her dust. And there's some question about whether or not Louise set them up to get caught with that tight shot on her disconnecting that last phone call to Hal, the one that's just enough hesitation for them to trace the call. She was connecting with Hal, she was heard by Hal, and that's what she needed to be free of all the things that had gotten out of control. Hal hovers above the final scene and sees them a two women lost in all the dust and exaggeration and so many things that he's helpless to change, but at least someone knows. Someone sees through the dust.

AmandaTheHun at 2013-06-14 19:57:39:

A couple other things struck me: -Hal represents the audience/reader in a way. He asks the questions we're asking (Could you kill a man? Could I?), reflects on the situation the way we do (How the hell did things get so far?), and roots for the girls/accepts their decision in the final moments. -Similar to what CydM noted, I began to wonder if Louise wanted to get caught on some level. For someone hell bent on getting to Mexico, she took a lot of detours. Around Colorado, I started to think she was just making excuses. I learned a lot from reading this script, noticing the transitions in dialog from one subject to a seemingly unrelated one and back. I took a lot of notes and enjoyed it immensely. :)