Daily Archives: October 7, 2021

The Dreamboat With No Name [THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY]

From the Chicago Reader (June 23, 1995). — J.R.

It’s amazing what an Oscar can do. Clint Eastwood’s career as a filmmaker was viewed by many as a cranky, uneven enterprise until he was anointed by the academy for Unforgiven. Now it’s clear that in many quarters he can do no wrong, even though A Perfect World and The Bridges of Madison County show no particular improvement in his work. (For starters, both films are longer than they need to be.) His skill in realizing and giving shape to the scripts of others is sometimes praised so highly it’s as if people thought the movie had emerged full-blown from his Zeus-like head. Whatever the achievements of The Bridges of Madison County (and they aren’t to be sneezed at), there’s a strong temptation to credit Eastwood with resuscitating the star system, the Hollywood tearjerker, and classical mise en scene (as I’ve done in my own capsule review). Yet at best he’s performing yeoman service on a so-so adaptation of a lousy novel, plunking his customary persona in the middle of it as if that were all it needed to achieve greatness.

Let’s face it, the danger of the star system is that it’s predicated to some degree on a blind worship of power; we’re encouraged to rationalize imperfections, slide over contradictions, and go with the oceanic flow. Read more