Thelma

dir: Josh Margolin

2024

I loved the absolute heck out of this film. I love every impulse behind it. I love that June Squibb is still alive in her 90s and could star in the flick, and do so incredibly well as the main character Thelma. I love that Richard Roundtree, legend of Blaxploitation cinema, the one the only Shaft, has a major role in this and that it was his last movie.

I love that the director is joyously paying tribute to his own grandma, being the Thelma from the movie’s title, who is still alive to this day at 103.

That’s not the same as saying that this is based on a ‘true’ story. The deliriously beautiful thing about the flick is the way it constructs something that seems like or feels like a heist flick, yet uses the low stakes befitting its characters to full comic effect. And yet the music /score doesn’t know that, and therefore barrels along like it is that high stakes heist flick.

It’s brilliant. Our protagonist, being Thelma, rolls over a bed, or evades someone on a mobility aid scooter, and the music accompanying the scene makes you think she’s robbing the vaults at Fort Knox or pulling off a caper the Ocean’s Eleven chumps wouldn’t dare to try.

It is ironic that one of her inspirations in the story is seeing Tom Cruise running and doing stunts, and being told by her grandson that “he does all his own stunts”, that inspires Thelma to do more than the people around her expect her to be capable of. Mission: Possible is what she believes in.

Despite being in her nineties, Thelma is active, energetic and walks around under her own steam. She lives alone, and not in assisted living, or some other euphemism for an old folks home, which is itself a euphemism, for those places we park the olds before they finally depart from this mortal coil.

Being a sacred elder, technology is not her forte, so when she tries to do something on the computer, it helps if she has her grandson Daniel around (Fred Hechinger).

They get along really well, but he seems to have the exasperated air of someone simultaneously impressed with how independent she is as well as fearful of how independent she is. He presents her with a wristband that will help him track her and monitor her health and whereabouts, and… that doesn’t sit well with her. The thing is, I can see it from her side of things, since she’s neither a child nor a device that needs tracking at all hours, and she’s in full possession of her faculties.

And I can see it from his perspective too, as someone who fretted about an elderly parent on their own, who also thought at some stage that tech would be my / their saviour, with a medical alert device that was meant to give me peace of mind that my dear old dad wouldn’t fall over somewhere and be lost to the world for several hours, unable to get up or do anything.

And in the end he refused to wear it, and in the end he fell down multiple times without my being any the wiser, and, well, everyone loses against the greatest enemy of all that old people have.

I don’t mean Death itself; I mean Gravity, that wily old scoundrel.

Just after a visit from her grandson, she receives a fevered call from someone saying they’re her grandson, and that they’re in trouble, and that she needs to send a bunch of money to someone in order to keep him out of jail, or worse.

Even if Thelma is mostly all there, she is still susceptible to circumstance, manipulation and sentiment, as are most of us. These scams targeting the elderly are common stories in the media, with so many people being taken in all the time by the callous and unscrupulous. And I’m not just talking about being ripped off by charities – churches – political parties.

It happens, but it shouldn’t have happened to Thelma. Had she loved her grandson a little less, had he not loved her as much as he did, maybe she wouldn’t have panicked and sent $10,000 to the scammers with barely a moment’s notice.

Once she figures out what’s happened, though, woe betide those who stole from her. Thus begins her crusade to regain her hard-fought treasure, and wreck vengeance upon the evil-doer’s heads.

Implausible? Sure, but Thelma is very determined. The people around her, besides the doting grandson, include a daughter who’s a therapist and a quintessential helicopter parent (the great Parker Posey), and a dad / son-in-law who’s well-meaning but always crushing his son under the weight of his expectations (Clark Gregg).

I like Parker Posey heaps, and Clark Gregg’s fine, both as an actor and a director, but they don’t need to be in this film. They’re not bad, in fact they’re fine in their annoying roles, but we don’t need them. The film doesn’t need them. They exist only to fill up time with their flailing and their puffery. And they also are only there so Daniel has someone to complain to about feeling so ineffectual in defence of his grandma, and useless in general as a millennial, maybe?

The thing is, Thelma doesn’t need them. She don’t need anyone. So determined is she to get back at those who wronged her that she doesn’t let any of the natural obstacles that appear to stop her.

She’s had to give up her license, and she knows her daughter and grandson would just give her an array of reasons as to why her mission won’t succeed. She don’t need their negativity.

What she needs is mobility. As in, a mobility scooter. She visits an old friend, Ben (Richard Roundtree in his last ever performance) at an old folks home with the express purpose of stealing his mobility scooter. But he is not so easily avoided or side-stepped. He is determined to help her, whether she wants his help or not.

That’s not a prelude to a “getting the team together” montage, because the team is full, but Thelma does consider that she might need some firepower, so the first element of the heist involves visiting an old acquaintance and stealing the handgun from her bedroom.

I cannot tell you how funny, and how sad that sequence is. It had me sobbing with laughter at the way the elements come together, but its farcical nature is also emphasised by the end of the scene, and it also manages a certain amount of poignancy, in that not all of Thelma and Ben’s peers have their level of engagement in the world, or all of their mental faculties.

They have seen the danger of folks who’ve collapsed inwards even if there’s nothing in tests or through examinations that reveal medical issues causing their dullness. A lack of stimulus, a lack of interest outside of the four walls of their house can lead to a premature death, a torpor from which it’s hard to surface from.

I won’t signpost all the elements of the plot, but let’s just be honest and say the stakes are so incredibly low that everything that transpires, where the family almost get close to catching her and stopping her from completing her mission, or the good fortune / happenstance that further things along work perfectly well when the stakes are where they are. We don’t want to see anyone get hurt. We also don’t want to see Thelma’s autonomy taken away from her. But we also worry that something bad is going to happen to her?

I have no doubt that much of the affection I feel for Thelma the character, June Squibb the actor and Thelma the movie is because I know what it is to have an aging family member and to worry about them constantly. I did it for years, and that was well before I became a full time carer to my dear old and dearly departed dad. The range of feelings you feel, the highs and lows, well, now enough time has passed that the grief isn’t too overwhelming, and I can watch something like this with something close to joy. Honest to god, I felt joy watching Thelma do all her various action-y equivalent yet age appropriate antics. I loved the way she interacted with people, the actions she takes, the lack of fucks she gives, her persistent humour, and her love of life.

I especially love the scene where she explains how important her independence is, mentioning as she does having sushi for the first time. It’s such a bizarre sounding scene, but I laughed so much, and I got what she was trying to say as well. Thelma is undeniably wise, of course, but she doesn’t have time to be sitting around like some kind of Mother Goose guru spouting statements that would sound perfect on the cover of a crocheted pillow or as some aphorism on a poster on a kitchen wall.

She’s too busy living. And, doing some needlepoint, because the devil finds work for idle hands, but mostly bustling about doing her glorious thing.

I started and continued so many sentences in this review with “I love” or “I loved where”, but after a beautiful scene at the cemetery towards the end, between gran and grandson, there’s such a illuminating scene where Thelma praises some trees they’re driving past, and it’s such a touching and odd scene, and I was immensely gratified to see it replicated in the credits with footage of the director’s grandma who obviously inspired that direct scene. I’m so glad I got to watch this. If the Academy people don’t give June Squibb the award for Best Actress next year in March, they are turds of the highest order.

I loved watching this film so much.

9 times this is my favourite film of the year thus far out of 10

==
“If I fall, I'm toast. That's why I don't fall.” – the solution is: never fall, you wonderful woman - Thelma