I haven't blogged in a while. I've gotten away from writing for some personal reasons, but look forward to sharing thoughts again. Lately, I've been watching "Bridges of Madison County". And in a conversation I had, it got me thinking, wondering why I enjoy it so much. A big part of it is just the story itself. A classic love story theme, without the happy hollywood ending. The book is just as fascinating. The movie doesn't follow the book format, but there are some wonderful passages in the book that aren't conveyed in the movie. Yet they both go hand in hand, and are equally enjoyable.
I shared the following with a friend, because I look at him as one of the last of his kind, the same way Robert is in this story:
Setting the scene: It's 1965, she's a farm wife, he's a roving photographer for Natl Geographic. Happenstance or fate brings them together the week her family is out of town. And they find a very powerful love between them, unlike any other "hollywood love story", nearly instantaneous, and yet both seem to sense they can never be together "happily ever after".
He says:
"There's a certain breed of man that's obsolete. Or very nearly so. The world is getting organized, way too organized for me and some others. Everything in its place, a place for everything. Well, my camera equipment is pretty well organized, I admit, but I'm talking about something more than that. Rules and regulations and laws and social conventions. Hierarchies of authority, spans of control, long range plans, and budgets. Corporate power; in 'Bud' we trust. A world of wrinkled suits and stick-on name tags.
Not all men are the same. Some will do okay in the world that's coming. Some, maybe just a few of us, will not. You can see it in computers and robots and what they portend. In older worlds, there were things we could do, were designed to do, that nobody or no machine could do. We run fast, are strong and quick, agressing and tough. We were given courage. We can throw spears long distances and fight in hand-to-hand combat.
Eventually, computers and robots will run things. Humans will manage those machines, but that doesn't require courage or strength, or any characteristics like those. In face, men are outliving their usefulness. All you need are sperm banks to keep the species going, and those are coming along now. Most men are rotten lovers, women say, so there's not much loss in replacing sex with science.
We're giving up free range, getting organized, feathering our emotions. Efficiency and effectiveness and all those other pieces of intellectual artifice. And with the loss of the free range, the cowboy disappears, along with the mountain lion and gray wolf. There's not much room left for travelers.
I'm one of the last cowboys. My job gives me free range of a sort. As much as you can find nowadays. I'm not sad about it. Maybe a little wistful, I guess. But it's got to happen; it's the only way we'll keep from destroying ourselves. My contention is that male hormones are the ultimate cause of trouble on this planet. It was one thing to dominate another tribe or another warrior. It's quite another to have missiles. It's also quite another to have the power to destroy nature the way we're doing.
It's probably time to put away the things of childhood and grow up. Hell, I recognize it. I admit it. I'm just trying to make some good pictures and get out of life before I'm totally obsolete or do some serious damage."
She marveled at the sense he had of his ways coming to a close and the ease with which he accepted it. He could see the approaching death of cowboys and others like them, including himself. And she began to understand what he meant when he said he was at the terminus of a branch of evolution and that it was a dead end. Once, in talking about what he called "last things", he whispered " 'Never again,' cried the High-Desert Master. 'Never and never and never again.' " He saw nothing beyond himself along the branch. His kind was obsolete.
When they mention leaving together, she tells him "In a curious way, you own me. I didn't want to be owned, didn't need it, and I know you didn't intend that, but that's what has happened. You have me inside of you as a willing prisoner." He replied "I'm not sure you're inside of me, or that I am inside of you, or that I own you. I think we're both inside of another being we have created called 'us', not really inside that being, we ~are~ that being. We have both lost ourselves and created something else, something that exists only as an interlacing of the two of us."
"Robert, last night when we were making love, you said something that I still remember: 'I am the highway and a peregrine and all the sails that ever went to sea.' You were right. That's what you feel, you feel the road inside of you. No, more than that, in a way that I'm not certain I can explain, you are the road. In a crack where illusion meets reality, that's where you are, out there on the road, and the road is you. You're old knapsacks and a truck named Harry and jet planes to Asia. And that's what I want you to be. If your evolutionary branch is a dead end, as you say it is, then I want you to hit that end at full speed. I'm not sure you can do that with me along. Don't you see I love you so much that I cannot think of restraining you for a moment. To do that would be to kill the wild magnificent animal that is you, and the power would die with it."
When it's time for him to go, he leaves her with this one last thought: "I have one thing to say, one thing only, I'll never say it another time, to anyone, and I ask you to remember it: In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes but once in a lifetime, no matter how many lifetimes you live."
He got in his truck, gears grinding as he drove down the lane. At the end, he got out, stood on the running board and looked at Francesca. She watched him, sunlight making prisms with her tears. Neither of them moved, they already had said goodbye. They just looked-- the Iowa farm wife, the creature at the end of his evolutionary branch, one of the last cowboys. For thirty seconds he stood there, his eyes missing nothing, making their own image that he never would lose. He closed the door, and was crying again as he turned left on the county road. He looked in his rearview mirror, and saw her sitting crosslegged in the dust where the lane began, her head in her hands.
I really like the Clint character in this movie. He's edgy and soft at the same time. In the movie, he doesn't talk fast, you get the idea that he's weighing his words. And he listens to Francesca as if he already knows that he wants to remember each and every word the rest of his life. It's as if he knows before it even starts how it will end.
There's an odd beauty in a love between two people that doesn't cause them to disrupt what is. Neither of them gave up what they had to start something new. They seemed to know that if she had run away with him, the guilt, the feelings, would catch up to them and ruin what was beautiful. Maybe that's what's wrong with the world today. Everyone so caught up in trying to 'have it all' that they end up feeling badly about themselves, and everyone involved, because they didn't have the courage, the morals, to do what's right, to not give in to selfish pleasures. Maybe that's the biggest appeal for me about the movie, overall. She didn't give in, didn't ruin what she had with a husband and children. So often I hear "I deserve some happiness" as if that's an excuse to turn your back on what is, and reach for something else.
There's a lot to be said for old ways, old character traits, that the world has gotten away from. Morals and values don't seem to be ingrained in the same ways as they used to be. I often speak of some people I run across who are "old souls" -- no matter their chronological age, they seem to be old, like me. And that's not a bad thing!! HUGS to all the old souls out there! (and the rest of you too!)
and a special HUG to my own "last cowboy"
