The Bridges of Madison County

Originally published on 10/08/2023 on Letterboxd

We’re hardly two separate people now…”

“The old dreams were good dreams; they didn't work out, but glad I had them”

”I don’t want to need you”
”Why?”
”Because I can’t have you”
”What difference does that make?”

The term "sublime" is not something I use very often, but this is absolutely deserving of its use, and so much more. This is one of the most effortlessly moving films ever made, teetering so delicately between breathless, youthful romance and the quietude of maturity. I can’t quite quite distil the spell this wonderful work of art casts on me without being overly personal, but I have been thinking a lot lately about the concept of Leaving, and what it means to leave someone behind me- more specifically, what it means to be the one left behind when you’re always the one leaving.

For that reason alone, there’s nothing quite as devastating as the subjectivity embodied in Eastwood’s direction here, where every brushing of skin against skin and every glance contains the weight of decades of repressed longing and inescapable tragedy. I think so often about how Streep (in what is probably the best, or at least most affecting, performance of her career) peeks out the blinds to see trucks leaving and entering her home, each arrival and each departure signalling a shift in the kind of woman she allows herself to be. by the time the truck leaves for the last time, she no longer looks out the window. Instead, she runs, desperately trying to catch one last glimpse of it leaving, because seeing Robert leave means that he might turn around, that he might decide to come back and that the old dreams she buried long ago might come back to life.

There’s a tremendous tactility to its surroundings, too, partly owing to Eastwood’s proclivity to shooting in natural light, creating these painterly, almost Malickian sensorial portraits- you can almost feel mild dampness of the summer dusk, the roughness of the linen collar that Francesca strokes so affectionately, and of course, the pattering of raindrops in Robert and Francesca’s final goodbye in the rain, mirroring the tears running down their cheeks. The bare simplicity of the shot/reverse-shot in that final exchange of glances between them is precisely what makes it so tragic- all they can really do is try to imagine the lifetime that they might have had together within the span of a few seconds. It reminds me of the final sequence of another one of my favourite films, Miami Vice, which ends with a coda that I think rings just as true for Eastwood’s film:

“Remember, I said- time is luck.”
”Luck ran out- it was too good to last”.