The Bridges of Madison County, 1995

The Bridges of Madison County, 1995
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, Annie Corley



Stage: TV selection on my home TV, Sunday night

The Bridges in short:The path of Francesca Johnson's future seems destined when an unexpected fork in the road causes her to question everything she had come to expect from life. While her husband and children are away at the Illinois state fair in the summer of 1965, Robert Kincaid happens turn into the Johnson farm and asks Francesca for directions to Roseman Bridge. Francesca later learns that he was in Iowa on assignment from National Geographic magazine. She is reluctant seeing that he's a complete stranger and then she agrees to show him to the bridges and gradually she talks about her life from being a war-bride from Italy which sets the pace for this bittersweet and all-too-brief romance of her life. Through the pain of separation from her secret love and the stark isolation she feels as the details of her life consume her, she writes her thoughts of the four-day love affair which took up three journals..



Preps: A good piece I have seen for several times and I love to see it again and again. Eastwood is my mantra.


Reality:

This is one of the most beautiful and most sad love stories of all times, in my opinion. It's all about making decisions and to follow your true love (or what you would like it to be) or not. Leave your life behind, along with your kids and a husband, or not. Blame the new guy for coming all the time you are with him or make yourself happy. Is it really that you would like to make yourself happy, is another question.

There are several perspectives, from which you can observe this particular piece. One of them is the straightforward one - a guy walks in a semi dead marriage and makes a revelation with Francesca. To himself and to her. And after four days they split and never get over it. The idea in this scenario is that she leaves the love to waltz away not knowing what would happen if it happened at all.

The irony is in the fact that most relationships start off like this, like a rocket and it's later that we figure we were living a bit in the clouds (or a lot in the clouds). And if those two really matched as it seems in the movie, it would work. What if they didn't - little they knew about each other and what it would be like living together.
Still, she was willing to escape for a brief moment and would leave it all behind. I think that up to some point Eastwood would have persuaded her to go with him, if he was a bit more insisting on this.
It's a good way to think about love and a disaster to your heart if you can impersonate yourself inside the story, if you ever loved someone and thought it would be it and yet, let it slip away. Regrets is what we all have for bigger or smaller things, sometimes they seem life important.

This is one of more romantic dramas I have ever seen on screen. A beautiful cast with Streep and Eastwood, making their energies fly away in the clouds and bringing the essence of love we are all seeking to the screen. However, if your momental status of love is a disaster, this movie could enhance the depression you are having. And vice versa.

Beautiful scenery, scenes beyond erotic, so sexually pleasing it is a pleasure to watch it. Dialogues are witty and intelligent. I adore watching the two chat about things.

This is one of the more remarkable ideas Eastwood brings to the table at the first dinner:
"I don't think obsessions have reasons. This is why they are called obsessions."

I adore it, from the beginning to its end. In many ways it makes me cry. And in many others, it makes me dream away.



My personal rate: 8,5 (a good romance, it will make you think about your virtues and things you seek in life and love).

Bridges on IMDB