The Bridges of Madison County

Bring back the mid-budget romance.

Never have I ever been more certain there’s a place in our cinematic universe for the mid-budget romantic drama. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and as we continue on into the Decline of the Blockbuster era, I argue it’s time we revive the genre. It’s time we start valuing what really matters: the way moonlight hits bodies intertwined, furtive glances, a jazzy waltz…

As Cord Jefferson said in his Oscar winning speech, “Instead of making one $200 million movie, try making 20 $10 million movies.” So I say, lets make sure each of those 20 movies are The Bridges of Madison Country.

The Bridges of Madison Country has always been my favorite Eastwood, and I managed to see it earlier last week in 35mm at the Roxy. It had been a couple of years, and my memory of the movie was fragmented. There’s the titular bridge, of course, a historic Iowa monument that Eastwood’s Robert Kincaid has arrived to photograph. And I remembered Meryl Streep, at her best, sporting an Italian accent that is either the greatest thing I’ve ever heard or just Sophie’s Choice backwash. And then there’s the frame story, an ingenious device that takes the film from a simple dissatisfied wife tale to, as Joshua Peinado writes for Screen Slate, “something more akin to a ghost story, where children must slowly confront the version of their mother they never knew, alongside their own beliefs about what a mother and wife must look like.”

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The film documents the doomed romance between worldly photographer Robert Kincaid, a man in his 60s who never desired to settle down, and Francesca Johnson, a younger Italian war bride whose dreams of America are shattered when she realizes that her husband has swept her away from her small life in Southern Italy for another small life in rural Iowa.

The postcard fantasy she had of American living is long gone when we’re introduced to her in 1965. She’s produced two kids throughout a pleasant but passionless marriage to Robert, and as adults decades later, these kids—following their mother’s death—discover a hidden, intimate life mapped out in her diaries. The film is then framed through entries, which chronicle Francisca’s malaise, isolation, and the three day long affair she had with Robert when her family takes a trip to the state fair. We’re only brought back to the present to see the siblings confront their own dissatisfactions as they delve into their mother’s psyche.

Given the flashback structure, Eastwood—who directs himself and Streep with a unexpected tenderness—makes his audience immediately aware that the affair is short-lived, but this gives Bridges a sense of urgency that’s frankly more mature that a “will they or won’t they” story. The drama is derived from revelation, as both Francesca and Robert reflect on their lives and current predicament. Robert essentially lays out the themes of the film in a simple, bittersweet line. “The old dreams were good dreams; they didn't work out but I'm glad I had them.”

This might sound too quaint, but Bridges made $182 million on a $22 million budget, which felt particularly miraculous as I sat in my seat and thought how impossible it would be to execute a two-hander like this today (at least on a theatrical level).

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Bridges is contemplative, chatty, and heady. It doesn’t rest on epic stakes or twists. It reveals its nature as it opens, and at over two hours and ten minutes, it’s the kind of movie I’m told time and time again has little room to thrive in a culture of engage-me-for-every-single-moment-or-else-I’ll-stop-watching-this viewing habits.

I don’t know if I buy the belief that viewers, especially young viewers, don’t have the attention spans to watch anything that isn’t an assault of fast-moving images. A friend likened our modes of consuming media to ADHD brain, where plot and tone have been made irrelevant. Instead, people crave twist after twist, a pile-on of shock, and erratic compositions that both do too much and nothing at all. Of course this is true, I’ve noticed it in the way I consume things too, but it doesn’t just have to be NOISE ALL THE TIME.

I don’t mean to be another, "the old times were better” kind of guy. There have always been shit movies and great movies, and there always will be shit movies and great movies. But I do think watching something, anything, is like any sort of conditioning process. My logic is if you’re not giving audiences Bridges, Defending Your Life, The Fabulous Baker Boys, then they’re not going to know not to want it.

I love a romance, and I think most people have room in their lives for them too, especially when they don’t cost $200 to make. And as I come up with ideas for my own writing projects, I’m often reminded of what modes of storytelling are unsuccessful, what pitfalls to avoid, only to see these arbitrary guidelines fall apart when something unexpected does catch on. At my core I believe people can be made to want anything. At my core I believe great movies are undeniable.

That’s all to say, Bridges was reinvigorating.