The mission of the Huntsville-Madison County Senior Center is to improve the lives of all older adults, no matter what their income level, through care services and programs. The implication is that viewers ought to do the same.The center is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing a community focal point where mature persons, as individuals or in groups, come together for services and activities which enhance their dignity, support their independence and encourage involvement in community activities. The Bridges of Madison County does succumb a bit to preachiness at the end as Francesca's disappointments, losses, and death move both of her children to do the best they can with the time they still have left. The flashbacks not only show us something about Francesca's true nature but also create a sense of the cycle of life that many of us go through, from abandoning childish dreams to surviving the death of parents. Middle-aged love may not interest teenagers much, but mature teens may connect with the idea that children can never really know their parents. They give the feathery writing enough weight to suggest believability. Redeeming the material are Eastwood as both director and in the role of Robert, the dreamy, courtly wanderer, and Streep, as the uprooted Italian girl now a rural Iowa housewife. Sadly, some remnants of what made the book annoying stubbornly remain - there's an underlying preachiness, as if the goal is to condescendingly instruct Francesca's children, and secondarily the rest of us, on what true love looks like. The overall message - that it's best to sacrifice personal happiness for the happiness of loved ones - is the flip-side of many famed tales about the doomed fate of heedless lovers who abandon everything for love.
#MADISON COUNTY MOVIE#
This well-made movie is far better than the simple-minded, tear-jerking, bestselling novel of 1992 it was based on. Much of the action takes place in flashbacks based on journal entries Francesca left for her children to read. All of this is revealed to Francesca's now middle-aged children after her death as they grapple with Francesca's odd burial wishes (she wants her ashes to rest where it turns out Robert's were strewn). She doesn't want to upend their lives or let them think she wasn't fully committed to them and their father so she does the noble thing and, like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, gives up love for something more important than herself. And she recognizes that even though her nearly-grown children barely even speak to her anymore, they still need her. Francesca wants to go with him but can't hurt her husband.
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Trying to persuade Francesca to leave her husband of many years and their teenaged children, Robert agonizingly observes that everything he's ever done up to that point has been leading him to find Francesca.
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The innocent encounter leads to a deep romance that lasts four days and although they painfully part ways, neither ever forgets the other. He stops at a farmhouse to ask for directions of Francesca ( Meryl Streep), the lonely Italian-American housewife whose husband and kids are away at the State Fair. Robert Kincaid ( Clint Eastwood, who also directed) is a National Geographic photographer driving through 1960 Iowa farm country looking for famed covered bridges, the titular BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY that he's been assigned to shoot.