Bridges of Madison County

I've mentioned it before, and I'll say it again... this is one of my all time favorite movies!!  There's just something timeless about it.  It's the love story between two people... and people have been falling in love for generations before me, and will for many generations to come.

Once in every life, someone comes along, 

and you came to me, it was almost like a song.

That's the general premise of the movie:  The family of an Iowa farm wife goes out of town, and one day a stranger in a pickup comes asking for directions.  And there begins a love like neither of them have known.   Being the 1960s though, their involvement would have wagged a few tongues in town.

Even though in our current society, people who find a new love find a way to justify starting a new life, it just wasn't done in the time of the movie.  Women (and men) made choices and they stuck with them.  There was a different vibe to life, one of sacrifice for the greater good than for one's self.

That doesn't stop this woman from keeping these memories to herself, treasuring each moment in private thought when things get rough.   While this assumption isn't part of the movie, you get a sense of that if you understand the old fashioned values.  

What is it about this movie that draws me in?  I think its the beginning scenes where they sit in the kitchen and converse.  They share thoughts and ideas, things that are probably missing in her life.  You get a huge sense of their attraction as they talk.  Maybe the attraction is a kind of kinship -- that certain something that is a missing piece in each other.  

Someday I will be gone, and my kids may come across this blog.  For that reason I want them to know what I thought, why I liked certain things, what they mean to me.  I know I write abut this movie often, but that's because it moves me every time I see it.  Perhaps its because I've been alone for 10 years, and yearn for a friendship such like that one that builds in the movie.  Or maybe its because I understand Francesca living in a marriage that's comfortable, but doesn't stimulate.  The kind where routine takes over and substance takes a back seat. 

The one part in the movie that brings me a huge smile is when she invites him to stay for dinner.  He comes in the kitchen and says "Can I help?"  and she says "Help WHAT?"   You can tell from her tone that a man helping in the kitchen is a concept that hasn't happened in her life.  :)

The long looks, the soft lighting, the mellow jazzy tune in the background all add up to a wonderful movie that speaks to the heart.   I'd love for everyone to enjoy this movie as much as I do! 

Grand Affair

Every woman deserves to have one really grand love affair in her lifetime.  And I've been lucky -- I've had two or three that would qualify in the grand and romantic category!  One went like this:

I was dating a man, lets call him Chad.  We decided we needed an overnight getaway.  It was his plan, and he made all the arrangements.  We headed to a small, old fashioned town and checked into a motel.  We wandered the streets, looking in some of the little shops, and decided on a place for dinner.  Heading back to the hotel, we showered and dressed to the nines.  I wore a spring skirt with jacket, my makeup was applied with care, hair curled and topped the look off with a spring hat; it was straw with a rim of flowers around the brim, and many ribbons hanging down the back. (Don't laugh it was 1989 and I looked good!!! hahaha)   He dressed in a beautiful grey suit with a timeless cut.

It was a warm spring evening, the sun was just setting, the air was warm, birds were singing as we strolled down the street to the restaurant.  I have to admit, we turned heads!  We were far dressier than the rest of the folks who were touristing there.  The whole thing was so romantic -- like something you see in the movies!  Holding hands, long looks across the table.  I can't remember what we ate -- and that part didn't matter.  We were on the verge of something wonderful!

Back in our motel --- well, I'm sure you know how that went *grin*

(I chuckle as I think back and try to remember details:  I have no idea what we ate for dinner, or even if we had breakfast the next morning.)


What brought all that up?  I am watching
"Bridges of Madison County" again.
Yeah, I know.  But this time, it got me
thinking about Grand Affairs -- those
moments in life that are bigger than the
everyday.  And every woman deserves
to have one of those in her life. 
Memories like that get us through
the tough times, if we choose to
remember those moments.   Even when the moment doesn't turn into a lifetime of magic, we still can recall those magical moments and let them bring a smile to our face.


What makes these moments so memorable?  I think a lot has to do with how the other person made us feel:  Special.  Important.  Whole.  Loved.  The distractions of daily life were left behind for a little while, the whole focus was on the moment.   It's not wealth or things that matter, its the memories we make with people we love, who love us, that matter.

Bridges ....

When I get to feeling a certain need, I put Bridges of Madison County in my DVD player.  There's just something about this movie that works for me.  Clint Eastwood is a wonderful director.  He knows how to take a scene and make it say so much without words, using light and long looks. 

But I popped this in tonight because ... well, in the past I've always identified with the female character, know what it feels like to love someone you can't have.  But maybe I have been looking at it all wrong.  Francesca is the one married, who can't leave her situation.  And Robert is the one who loves her enough to walk away from her life.

The goodbye scene is very moving; Francesca talks Robert through her reasons for not being able to leave.  She can't hurt her husband, or her children.  But her best point is this: 

What about us?  he asks.
You have to know, deep down, the minute we leave here, everything will change.
No matter how much distance we put between ourselves and this house
I'd carry it with me, I'd feel it every minute we're together
and I will start to blame loving you for how much it hurts
and even these 4 days will seem sordid.

Some people search all their life to find this;
others don't believe it exists at all.
This kind of certainly happens but once in a lifetime.


I'm wondering if I shouldn't be taking a lesson from his point of view on this one.  The last scene between the two of them is a rainy street corner.  She's in town picking up a few groceries, and Robert is about ready to leave.  He sees her in the truck, and stands on the corner in the pouring rain, and says his non verbal goodbye as he looks long and hard at her, then turns and climbs into his truck and drives away.



It had to be that hardest thing in the world, to walk away from that love he was so sure was 'it' - that deep abiding love that reaches our soul - the one most people wish they had.


(Odd isn't it -- that my fortune was about my perspective changing, and a I have an "AHA" moment when I watch Bridges...???)

Bridges of Madison County

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"