The Bridges Of Madison
The old dreams were good. They weren’t fulfilled, but I’m glad I had them.
– I don’t want to need you.
– Why?
– Because I can’t have it.
Francesca Johnson leads a quiet life on a country estate with her husband and children. After her family goes to a fair, Francesca is alone at home. One day, he receives an unexpected visit from Robert Kincaid, a National Geographic photographer , who is visiting Madison County, Iowa, for professional reasons, as he must photograph the old bridges there.
Love and mutual admiration do not take long to awaken the passion hidden in their hearts.
Clint Eastwood’s work (“The Lone Ranger”, “White Hunter, Black Heart”) stunned everyone. The San Francisco-born actor and director had been used to providing audiences with tons of good action movies; either as an interpreter, as in the “Trilogy of Dollars”; as main actor, in “For a Handful of Dollars”, “For a few more Dollars” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”; or with masterful directed titles, such as “The Unnamed Stranger”, “Bird” and “The Unforgivables”. But in 1995, Eastwood decided to change his gender.
He exchanged the revolver for a bouquet of flowers and an extraordinary smile and, with Meryl Streep, enchanted everyone.
The situation in which the film takes place is very interesting, as it is, and always will be, in the present time ; the protagonist is a married woman, a good wife and a caring mother, but lives a monotonous life.
One day, she meets a man who is attractive and interesting at the same time, so the question arises: is it worth betraying your husband’s trust by an isolated episode of dream?
All of us have had, throughout our lives, situations in which our will power was put to the test. It is inevitable that, at times, we feel attracted to other people, be it their personality, their physique, etc. If, as in the case of the protagonist, we lead a boring, colorless life, our ability to reflect our tiredness on someone else is more likely.
It may be that we see in another man or in another woman everything we wish to be or have. The main cause of this is insecurity and boredom.
Of course there is another factor: the “other person”, the second half of our relationship. If we feel abandoned and underappreciated, it is more normal that, sooner or later, we look outside the relationship for what we all want: recognition.
On the other hand, if our wife or girlfriend, or our husband or boyfriend, responds to us as we want and as we believe we deserve, looking for what we don’t have in other people is pure selfishness. It is a fact that stems from our innate ability to disagree with everything around us, no matter how good it is.
Are we bad people if we succumb to the faces of deception? Not necessarily. We all make mistakes of all kinds. What, yes, is worrying is the recurrence of this type of actions. If we repeat acts of deceit and betrayal, it only means one thing: we are liars and traitors.
Also, we would not want our partner to be unfaithful, so why should we commit acts we would hate if they were done to us? Well, because we may be a bunch of hypocrites in today’s society.
