Why is “The Bridges of Madison County” so Sublime?

The movie is better than the book, and that’s the key

I’m almost ashamed now, to say that I love this book. Not because it reveals something corny or maudlin or inadequate in me. Quite the reverse.

Ok. I’ll say it out loud. The movie is better than the book. Because of the acting.

Not the exquisite cinematography or the deft editing or the elegant script. It is the actors who make this film so good.

It took me three weeks to finish. I found it be unrealistic and “corny” — Camille IL

Oh, come now! It should be a race between reading time and viewing time. It’s only a tiny tome. That in itself says something about the quality of writing. Four days of detailed description, and there’s not a word too many.

The worst book ever written … and it just went on and on with pure drivel! Unbelievable. — mtkk

No. If you can’t see the beauty from the first pages, then all the others will fail to resonate. Trust me. I’ve read bad books where you turn a page to find better writing, and before you know it chapters pass and the book is over without finding any. Mein Kampf. Wild Animus.

This is not one of those books. If you see drivel, you aren’t looking.

If Robert James Waller’s name had any i’s in it, I’m sure they would be dotted with little hearts. — kate OH

Sentimental tripe, some say. Iowa through roseman-coloured glasses. It’s not all flowers and birdsong and yearning looks.

Sure and it’s corn and family and doing the dishes and mopping the lino. We all live in the world.

But we can see the stars twinkle, and hold a child’s hand, and read a poem with a loved one, surely?

Slow ambling story about required love but unrequited life. — Martha Fawcett

I don’t know whether Martha is being 5D chess genius clever, or just got her words mixed up. In my eyes, Life and Love and Happiness are one and the same thing. Not even the intersection of three circles. Nope. A single point.

You just have to see it that way, and then there’s no going back. Francesca Johnson and Robert Kincaid might have discovered differences in their bodies and their memories and their futures, and the way they rub these against each other is exciting, but somehow they have pushed further from the mundane to the sublime than most of us ever get in our physical embodiments.

I don’t know how to put it in English. In a blizzard of snowflakes, no two the same, these are? They dance a single duet? They look into each other’s eyes and see themselves?

I’ve met married couples who spend decades together and find their thoughts running along a single track. It is utterly delightful to see this, and the great sorrow of the world when it ends, as end it must in these mortal bodies.

Yet Robert and Francesca find it in a day.

Romantic, only she’s married! — Judah IN

And some marriages never find that intimacy of souls. Not in a day, not in a decade. Sex is a pleasure and not a joy. The partner’s life is a nearby highway, with crossroads linking, but never joining. You look over and wave at the other driver who has the same last name and shares your bed, but you are always apart where it matters most.

So, do you want more eggs or should we just fuck on the linoleum one last time? — Francesca IA

Poor Robesca! Four days together and it all comes down to a mundane choice. Here is the whole point of the story, and you’d miss it entirely if you thought it was about sex or adultery or even romance. It is the knowledge that they must part.

It’s not job or lifestyle or family or duty. The author could have concocted any number of excuses, but even if Francesca had gotten out of one pickup into another in that rainy scene, they would have reached the same moment seventeen years later.

The parting of experience is inevitable. Putting it off does not make it any less painful.

I read the book!!! Now I wish I had not! — Morbious2 USA

I just don’t get the fuss. — Candela

Maybe if we walk along life’s path a little further, we might find that we now see what had been there all along. Who amongst us does not wish they could go back to some moment when we did not know what we had?

The eyes of childhood, the embrace of a grandparent now gone, the first time we saw an ocean, or a rainbow, or the wag of a puppy’s tail?

We may not recognise it at the time, but one day we will see what was always there, and wish that we had noticed it earlier.

I hurled the book across the room and yelled, “Pap!”, then I quickly ran to see if I’d damaged the library’s book I had just thrown — and to think I had been on a waiting list to read this book. — TXRed RI

We see timeless gold, and say it is pap, and maybe we will always think that way.

Or maybe one day we will see what is always there, we just need to clear away the mist that hid the truth from us.

We change as we walk along the path. More years sometimes bring more insight, and we see things we’d never noticed before.

To truly become ourselves, we must come away from what we are not.

We are not wives and mothers and girlfriends or photographers or writers. Those are parts we play, but the play comes to an end, we turn away, and what are we then?

Nothing?

Or everything?

I’ve heard the movie is great though. — Kindle Customer

I read the book and I sighed for the romance and the, yes, once in a lifetime union of two souls. And then I saw the movie, and Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood covered that perfectly. They were the characters.

I didn’t need any fancy actors to see the gold in the book. So what’s missing in all those who needed the movie?

And what is covered up in those who never see the real story?

Look into your heart. It is there. Maybe you need to read the book or see the movie with fresh eyes.

Trite or truth, The Bridges of Madison County gained a lot of eyes on page and screen. Evidently it touched a heart or two.

The story touched mine.

Britni

Another book that you either love or hate: