Review: ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ is the Perfect Romance
Clint Eastwood’s 1995 masterpiece is one of the best films of its kind
When I was really starting to dig into Clint Eastwood’s work as a director, I remember having doubts about The Bridges of Madison County. The work of Eastwood that I had seen up to that point had almost exclusively revolved around flawed male heroes (with exceptions seen in Eastwood’s adaptation of real-life stories, which often frame their leads in a more heroic light), and that character style seemed to be one that Eastwood understood perfectly. So many of Eastwood’s male heroes, including those he played himself, were tragic. This, of course, added to their romance too, but there was something so potently melancholic to characters like Josey Wales (of The Outlaw Josey Wales) or Frankie Dunn (of Million Dollar Baby).
These were characters I could connect to very easily. I even idolised some of them when I was younger for their stoicism in difficult circumstances. Having seen interviews with Eastwood since, he has stated an admiration for the cinematic ideal of the completely independent man, somebody who needs nothing to survive — a hardened, masculine figure.
When I saw that The Bridges of Madison County was not only a film which focused upon Meryl Streep’s ’60s…
