A less serious Bonnie and Clyde. A more serious Raising Arizona. A less violent Natural Born Killers. These are just some of the comparisons that come to mind when contemplating Steven Spielberg’s 1974 sophomore film The Sugarland Express (written by Hal Barwood, Mathew Robbins, and Spielberg himself.)
And those first three films are all linked together by an interesting facet: Each of their protagonists was in pursuit of their version of the American Dream. But in the case of Sugarland Express, Goldie Hawn’s Lou Jean and William Atherton’s Clovis* would have accepted the prototypical version of that Dream in a heartbeat.
*They both give such good, nuanced performances here. Hawn impresses with a rare dramatic turn, and Atherton plays one of his few sympathetic non-a-hole characters. The movie genuinely wouldn’t work without them.
Early in the film, from the backseat of State Trooper Slide’s commandeered patrol car, Lou Jean turns to look back at Captain Tanner, the leader of the police caravan that is pursuing them.
And the framing of this shot says everything about Lou Jean and Clovis’ lot in life: the criminal couple seen through the back window of a cop car, rejected by society, rejected by their families, with the law right behind them.
Lou Jean holds up a finger and smiles, and we might think she is taunting Captain Tanner in some way. But maybe Lou Jean is simply asking for a chance, just one chance, to be like everyone else. She just wants the Dream that’s offered to everyone - the Dream society says you should want, while denying it to whoever they want.
In short, what Lou Jean wants is the Rockwellian nuclear family, picket fence and all. Clovis just wants a respected, reputable job; we see this when he asks State Trooper Slide what it takes to be a highway patrolman (even though they have literally taken Slide hostage). But more than anything else, they both just want their son back - who has been permanently placed with foster parents in Sugarland, Texas - and they just want to live “normal” lives.
They just want to be accepted.
And therein lies the sad undercurrent of Sugarland: We’re not quite sure if our leads are too naïve to realize they can never have the American Dream as promised, or if they just plain refuse to accept that people like them – people with criminal records, people who have been deemed “unworthy” – will never be allowed to partake in society.
And it doesn’t help that Lou Jean and Clovis get an ironic taste of that societal acceptance they desire so much.
During their journey to retrieve Baby Langston from Sugarland, the desperate couple and their slow-moving police caravan trickle through small towns across the heartland. As everyday people swarm Slide’s car and adorn our couple with praise, Lou Jean and Clovis discover that by accidentally becoming folk heroes overnight, they have also accidentally attained that American Dream.
Or at least a version of it.
After all, if there’s one thing that is drummed into us from childhood, it’s the allure of fame. We are constantly told that becoming famous will lead to better lives, even if dignity and privacy are the prices to pay.
This means that, sure, the American people are on Lou Jean and Clovis’ side for now, but it’s only because they were on TV. The irony is that if Lou Jean and Clovis hadn’t been elevated by the media - if they were just “regular” criminals as opposed to “celebrity” criminals - then the American people might not have been so quick to welcome them with open arms.
In that regard, the most poignant scene of the film occurs when Lou Jean and Clovis hide from the law inside an RV that has all the trappings of a real American household, gas stove and all.
Just for a moment, it’s just them, in a “home” they built together. They lock eyes and laugh together - at their circumstances, at what led them here, at their unknowable futures. And they get to experience the joy they might have had if such a life was possible for them. Lou Jean even says, “If Baby Langston was here, we’d be a real family.”
And that’s the key word: real. Or rather, society’s version of what is real.
As they share this intimate moment in that RV, Lou Jean and Clovis happen to catch a Looney Tunes cartoon - a quintessential slice of Americana - playing on a drive-in theater screen across the street.
At first Lou Jean and Clovis enjoy the show, as if they were simply sitting there with their ordinary TV dinners in their ordinary home. But then Wile E. Coyote falls off a cliff, and Clovis’ smile fades.
Because he has just seen a premonition.
Lou Jean and Clovis are just like that coyote, doggedly pursuing that dang Dream, despite the obstacles being thrown in their path. And at that moment, Clovis sees the cliff they are headed for. But he keeps going anyway because he must try, even though he knows he’s going to fall. And he hopes that Lou Jean will be holding his hand all the way down.
And the irony is right there for us to see throughout every beat of this familiar American story, right up until its predestined ending. Because all stories of this type end in broken dreams.
But the most ironic aspect of all is that The Sugarland Express feels just as timely and evergreen today as it did back then.
You wouldn’t even need to change a single frame.