Bridges of Madison County - Book Vs. Movie

Season 2 is back 🎙️

This week we’re getting into The Bridges of Madison County — the book by Robert James Waller vs the film with Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep.

And honestly… we’ve got questions.

We’re told this is one of the greatest love stories ever — but it’s also a 4-day affair that somehow lives rent-free in her head for 20 years… so where do you land on that?

We get into:

• Book vs film differences (and why the film hits harder)
• Whether we’re actually supposed to root for the adulterers
• Kincaid being less “mysterious legend” and more… slightly desperate
• The VERY long, very wet kissing scenes
• Why Francesca might actually be the most sensible person in the whole story
• And yeah… the oversharing with the kids — because some things you can keep to yourself

If you’ve ever wondered:
Is Bridges of Madison County romantic… or just a bit mad?

We’ve got you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello? Alright. Why is that like that? Okay. Make sure that's recording. Hello and welcome to the new season of Is the Book Better with me. New season, new microphone. So hopefully this is coming through a lot clearer. Still need to work on the video. I know that. That is just my face though. Nothing I can do about it. But I thought we'd start the season with my most serendipitous start. I knew I was getting back for the new season. I had a few books lined up, of which will be episode 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. But number one just shuffled right in. I was on a road trip. I stopped at Watford Gap Services. Some of you may know it well, southbound. And what do I see in my favourite section, the charity book section? I see the bridges of Madison County. What I also see, and this isn't lazy me, I see a very short story. So I'm thinking, hey, I could bosh this in a night, I could bosh the film as well, and that's episode one. That's what it's gonna be. So that's what it is. Today, on Is The Book Better With Me, Jay Martini, we are doing the bridges of Madison County. I had neither seen the film or read the book. Full disclosure, and I know I seem to say this every episode, didn't know it was a book. But I hadn't seen either or read either. So I thought, what better way? What better way to jump in than something I know nothing about? I just know this is meant to be sad. I am a person who likes to type in top ten saddest films and then watch them. I've seen most of them now, but Bridges of Madison County is always up there and it's just never been the right time for me. I've just it's never looked like it was for me, you know. A couple of older people staring at each other in love. See, I didn't know anything about it, so I didn't know what it was about. I just knew I knew Mel Street was knocking around in there, and then Clinton Eastwood at some point. I didn't know anything else about it, so yeah, I thought let's get into it. So, that's exactly what we're gonna do. Cue the theme song. Right then, the bridges of Madison County. Where to start? Let's start with the similarities of the book and the film. At its core, it's identical, basically. And as I have to say, and I keep forgetting to say, I'm sorry, there will be spoilers throughout this. I find it very difficult to compare and contrast a book and a film without talking about what happens in the book and the film. I know a more intelligent person could do it without spoiling everything for you, but I'm not that guy. I'm not that guy. I'm gonna spoil it and I'm gonna say everything that happens. So the core the the summation of the whole thing is identical. It is an identical story, really. It's a four-day affair that goes only lasts four days but expands for a lifetime. And I know some of you were in my boat being like, What what do you mean? What do you mean it's four days but it expands it expands a lifetime? They do somewhat successfully actually get that across, but it's pretty crazy. So basically, all that's happening is you've got an Italian lady living in Iowa, of all places. Uh she met her husband during the war, um, he got her out of Italy, and she's been there ever since, and she is a very humble housewife, still with her Italian accent, after all these years, and while her kids are away at a fair again, someone to, I don't know, grade their horse or something, um, a guy comes asking for directions, and that guy happens to be a lean, muscular Clinton Eastwood. Not Clint Eastwood in the book, it is Robert Kincaid. And Robert Kincaid is not like other men. Robert Kincaid is not really a man at all. He is man versus beast, the battle within. He's a poet, he's a cowboy, he's a what's that song? He's a picker, he's a grinner, he's a steam of the band. Listen, go listen to that, it sounds exactly like what I just did. So she over these four days, and he over these four days be they become infatuated with each other. They are both such brushes of breaths of fresh air in each other's lives, and I think she's giving him this idea of home for like quite a wandering man, and he's giving her this idea of the wider world and what is beyond the boundary of the farm, so they get to getting it on. But what's strange about that is I think it's just something you do with a film, especially when you know, hey, that's obviously the protagonist, um Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep are clearly the the people we should be rooting for, but should we? I mean Clint Eastwood, to be fair, is a divorced single man. Meryl Streep, and this isn't slut shaming, Meryl Streep is a married woman, so the person we really shouldn't be rooting for is Meryl Streep because she is the one that is actually in a relationship. But this very much seems to be a 50-50 scandal. Even though he's not in a relationship, I still think he he he pushes it, he pushes for this to happen, and he's a bit of a home wrecker. Not so much in the book, I think in the book he sweeps her off her feet with just the way he's talking. He's not talking about attempting to sweep her off her feet, he's just saying things that make her swoon, saying things that the average Iowa farmer doesn't say, romantic shit that the average Iowa farmer is not saying in between having his hand up a sheep's ass or whatever it is that farmers do. I don't I don't I've never been a farmer. But that's she's not getting that from her husband, so he just walks in and he's just he's quoting poetry, he's making pictures as he says, and I'm not gonna lie, in the modern view of it, it's giving performative mail, it really is. It's giving he had some feminist literature in his back pocket. That that's what it feels like. But obviously, hey, apparently he was not performing, he wrote alone, he wasn't doing this for anyone. This is just who the man was, and it just so happened it was an absolute panty dropper for um Francesca in her farmhouse. She was swooning all over the place because I mean she's she's Italian, she comes from the a land of passion, and she hasn't had any in years, you know. She's she goes out to buy a dress, especially, and she can't remember the last time she bought a dress for herself. It's been years, she's very much become a housewife, and it's of that time in America where that is your life, you are the housewife, that's your life, and it's of a time where you are not getting divorced because you'll be sent out to pasture, you cannot have an affair because you'll be sent out to pasture and we'll all talk about you. It's a very chaste time, I would say. So she is just a coiled spring ready to go, and it just so happens, if this is the correct analogy, that Robert Kincaid is the lube that moistens the spring. No, I lost it there. You can tell I don't write. But the key thing it always comes back to is that this affair can only be in this bubble of an affair. Because as soon as you take the affair out of the affair and make it a thing and you run away together, the remorse you would have for leaving your children behind would completely eat up most of the romance, I would say. I don't care how good he's giving it to you, leaving your kids behind is gonna leave a hole that his um uh I assume translucent aged penis is never gonna fill. So you you could never have that. You can never you would never be able to find the happiness again, no matter what he does, no matter where he takes you. I don't care if you go see a gazelle in Tanzania or wherever the fuck, you're gonna have still abandoned your children. And I know there's 14 and 16, you're still gonna have abandoned your children, simple as, and also when the bills hit the map, the romance is dead. I don't know which comedian it is that talks about how, and this is a little bit of a side thing, you can't have the best sex of your life with the person that you're married to because as soon as you start to get a little bit freaky, a little bit crazy, they know who you are in day-to-day life. That illusion that you may have of being this like bad boy or crazy girl is gone because they know that you're allergic to milk. They know that you I don't know, but that they just they know things about you that completely destroys the illusion. Whereas in here, all they're giving to each other is stuff they want each other to know about each other, so that they've made these versions of themselves that are honest, but at the same time can be as honest as possible because they know there's an end date, or at least one of them does. Francesca knows there's an end date, Robert, not so much, especially in the film, and then the ending is the same as well, which hey, I grew up on Hollywood films, and I really thought that they would maybe just have one more glimpse at each other across a field or something, just one more like knowing glance. She goes, Finally, the Iowa farmer takes her on holiday to Paris and she just walks past Robert Or something like that, something something serendipitous, something a little just to just to fill fill my heart a little bit that the adulterers get to see each other one more time. Is it's backwards thinking. That's what's in my head. But unfortunately, they never see each other again. In the book, she sees him take a turn at a light, as everyone in the car's talking about him, um, and she says that she wants to run. She right now she could just get out of the car and run to his car and just drive off, but she stays in the car, and in the film it's a lot of a lot much lot more lot more drawn out, and Robert stands in the rain and stares at her as she stands in it, as she sits in her car, and then they drive behind him, and she's pulling on the lever to get out of the car, the door handle, and she might go, but she doesn't and she doesn't hear from him again, which was her wishes. She didn't want to have a random letter from him being intercepted by her husband, and then her whole entire marriage gets derailed, um, even though you know they did have an affair, uh, and she stays in the same house just in case he comes back, and he never does, and the only correspondence she gets after the initial correspondence is a box from the lawyer saying this is the estate of Robert Kincaid, he's dead, and that's the same in both the book and the film. Um, and this is all being discovered after the fact. This is all being discovered by the author and by the kids, by her kids, after she's died. They're going through her things, they're reading her journal, and they're reading her story about what happened, which is quite touching. Um, that they this is how they discovered it, and you go through the emotions of finding out if your mum cheated on your dad. Because at first, obviously, you're you're gonna feel anger because you'd be like, What four days? The fucking Indiana State Fair, you having a laugh? We've gone for four days, and she's still thinking about this guy. You what about our dad? And you they go through all the emotions and eventually they're like, Well, fuck it, she had four days of a lifetime. You know, we could we got credit where credit's due, the rest of it was pretty fucking boring. She spent the rest of it looking out on an Iowa field washing our skid marks out of our shorts. You know, I'm glad she got some mustily penis from Clint Eastwood. You know, you got she's gotta have you gotta live a little. And you know, her husband was well-meaning, and she you know, he gave her a a life. Um but as he sat on his deathbed, I know you didn't get to I know I didn't help you fulfil your dreams, you know. So she I'm glad she got those these four days, and I know it's cheating and I know it's bad, but let her live a little. It's a Italian woman in her prime. Let her enjoy it. However, from those letters, she shares a lot. Um and I'm I'm fine with it for the most part because she shares things like you know, um, we slept together here, we slept together there. Um but then she does mention the kitchen table, and after the dad died, they threw out the they took out the new kitchen table and brought back in the old one, and the son was always like, I don't know, I never understood why she told me to bring in the old kitchen table again. Never don't even know why we still had it. It's because she got bent over it. King Cade absolutely ran her through over this kitchen table, and she was like, you know, be a good boy, bring it in for me, and I can sit there and think about what Robert did to me on that table. And then they're sat at the table reading these letters, being like, Oh Mum, what the fuck? That's so weird. Why have you I I get it? We we're coming to terms with the fact that you've had an affair and you had sex all over this house, but you don't need to go into that much detail. We don't need that much detail, thank you, Jesus. But that they're the similarities, and sorry I about the I had to go on the segue about her being railed against the table, it just wasn't a bit weird, a bit weird to do that. Um but the differences are where the key is for me into what makes this better. The core of the story is still there. You're not gonna read the book and get a different a much different ending to the film, and vice versa. It's all pretty much the same. Um however, where the book is a bit rose-colored spectacles about the whole thing. I think because it's being the writer is being told the story by the family member of the people, of the person that experienced it, based on the letter she wrote, you're really getting this whitewash version of what happened. It's not very messy. Whereas the film version is way more messy. Even over those four days, they do a lot more. Also, they go out, they go to a club, and obviously, with it being like a jazz club, which at the time was predominantly black, no one of her group of the time, farmers and all that lot were gonna run into um anyone, so they could they were safe to go there at the time, and it was mentioning a jazz musician friend of his had told him about this place, so they got to go out and do some of that stuff. That didn't happen in the book, they didn't do anything really in the book, they just stayed home bumping uglies and pouring brandy all over their good parts. That was in the book as well. But the messy part of where their conversations do have ups and downs, in the book, he is so poetic and mystical in the way he speaks, he doesn't step a foot wrong, he knows exactly what to say, and this is where the performative male part comes in for me. He just always has the right thing, he's so smooth, so he can do anything, he can do anything just to convince and he he basically seems like he's going out of his way to you know drop a kex, but in the book, he's he's way more clumsy, and um it makes it feel less like he's just a you know Lothario travelling the world, putting it wherever he can, and more like a guy that is has absolutely become besotted with this woman in the space of 12 hours, and he falls hard, she falls to, but he has nothing to fall from. He's at zero, like he has no one, so he has nothing to lose, really. Whereas she has other people, so that is always a conflict throughout it, and it makes it a lot more messy, a lot more real, and a lot more like it seems to have actually happened. Whereas the book does seem a little bit like, hmm, I feel like we're cutting some parts out here, and so he Clinton Eastwood does come across as a little bit beggy, I I do think in the film. He really like she is she's pretty clear quite a few times that she's like, I can't leave this life behind, and he's like, But what if you did though? She's like, No, and he's like, but you could, and she's like, No, Robert, um, and that's basically it. And and again, and then when he's when he stops like begging and being like, Okay, I respect your wish, she's like, but maybe I could, and he's like, Oh fucking, what are we doing? Are you gonna leave or not? And that's that's what you know makes it a bit more messy, a bit more real, but he is a bit beggy in the film. Um what I do like about the film though, is it sits more in the moments, um it's it has it knows it's got some actors in there, you know. Say what you want about Clinton Eastwood's acting, he he can when he wants to, he can't he can also not do too well, but he's the guy's an icon, and obviously Meryl Streep. You know, need we say more. So even with you know, if you if you said to me, Oh, Anne Hathaway's in this film, she's doing an Italian accent, I'd be like, are we sure about that? Should we not just get Simone Tabasco and be so happy with our decision? Uh that's a little uh white lotus reference for anyone who saw that and is still in love with Simone Tabasco. But Meryl Streep can do it, and it does take some getting used to it because it's like, but you know what what would her accent sound like? She is someone who is Italian who's been living in Iowa for nine, ten, twelve years, whatever. So it will be a little bit like a little bit wonky, but she's she's convincing. Meryl Streep is convincing, let's face it, in whatever she does, she's she's convincing. I mean, there are some bad films, of course, but you know, you've got to get that check. But you do have the calibre of actor that allows for these long pauses where they sit in a mistake that they've said, where they sit in the the love making, they sit in their post-coital bliss a lot. There's a lot of sitting in your postcoital bliss, um, which does also lead in a bat a negative to the film, a lot of wet scenes. For those who don't like the sound of kissing, you yeah, I don't know, watch the version of this film where there's no sex scenes because there isn't really any sex in this, it's post, it's pre and post game, uh, and all of it's wet. Yeah, so I don't think this film's very sexy. The book for me is far sexier than the film because you've got the inner monologue, you have a little bit of voiceover work being done, but that's mostly from the letters, because obviously the kids are reading the letters, so you're not gonna get her innermost thoughts at the time, and I'm glad you don't because she does talk about you know, for the first time in years being just the movement of the man makes a wet between the legs. That's a power that a man should not possess, but alas he does with his little camera. So she is absolutely revved up, she really is absolutely revved up for him, and you feel that you you can see that in the film, but you hear about it in the book. So, those who like a bit a bit more smutty, I would go for the book in this case, but the one thing I keep coming back to in all of its pros and cons is I think the kids should have been angrier for longer in both the film and the book, um, because I'm not gonna lie, if my kids read through my wife's letters in seventy years and they go, Oh my god, she's she had an affair. She had an affair when she was thirty. And she wants to be buried by she wants to have her ashes scattered where that guy's ashes were scattered too 'cause of that affair. For four days 40 years ago, and I'm just I'm just laying in my grave with a space next to me waiting for her, and she's not showing up. I want them to be pissed off a bit more, if I'm honest, and I'd be pretty pissed, to be honest, that I hadn't outdone in my lifetime of commitment to a marriage, I hadn't outdone four days with muscly sinewy Clint Eastwood. And I'm not gonna lie, I know it's a different time now, but if my wife were to have an affair with muscly Clint Eastwood type guy, Scott Eastwood, let's say, I would hope she would just come clean and I can be like, well, if that's what you want to hang your hat on, you hang your hat on that, and we'll we'll sort it out. But I'm not gonna be I'm not gonna be out here trying to prove well no, because he couldn't even prove himself because he didn't even know what he was up against because he didn't know anything about the affair. But I'm I would hate like everything I've done wasn't better than four days with this man. And maybe this is my fragile male ego, but me now helping you raise two children, giving you though I didn't give her, you know, I did a bit at the start and then she did the rest, but then being there helping with the two kids wasn't better than four days with this guy. You're gonna look in your kids' faces and be like, you guys are great and everything, but yeah, something about the way you made me feel just I could I could I was so close to running away from all this, so close, you guys don't know how close it was. I would have to look at my wife and be like, You are not who I married. What are you talking about? That's crazy. I'm you know, I was just about to say, I'm all for an affair, but I'm all for romance, I'm all for being swept off your feet. But be swept off your feet by your fucking partner if you're in a relationship, and if you want to go dick around, be single and go dick around and be swept up and swept under and bent over by whoever you want to be bent over by. Enjoy that, male or female, enjoy it. But if you're in a relationship, you've got to start being like, hey, I'm not getting what I want from this relationship. I've gotta I've gotta fuck it off. I'm sorry. Kids are nearly grown now. I know you've lived on this farm for a hundred years, but I think we gotta go our separate ways. As this guy, you know, the affair won't be the affair if we do get together, but I'd like I'm gonna just have to go see. Worst case it doesn't work out with him, and I go find someone else. We've had our life together, it's ran its course, I've got to go. Because otherwise, you sit in the sorrow of a life you could have had, and you still have time for that life after you've lived your humble one. You could she could have gone, she could have contacted him afterwards. I know she tried to for like ten seconds, tried to contact him to meet up again, but she stayed in that house not for the love of her husband and the concept of you know continuing his legacy at that house. She stayed in that house just in case another guy she met for four days 25 years ago showed up again. That's what fucks me off. That's what gets me. That's where I'm like, Francesca, mate, you you've made the worst decision. Your kids are up and grown, they've gone, and I understand that it may have hurt your husband to leave, but it would probably hurt more in the long run to be in a relatively loveless marriage, a passionless marriage. If you're all you're thinking about every day is Robert Kincaid and how he made you feel and what he did to you, you get the fuck out of the marriage, mate. Get gone. The kids are left. And then he's on his deathbed, the actual husband, he dies, and you try for two seconds to go find the guy. So you spent all this time asking like waiting for him and thinking about him, and the one time where you probably could have rekindled, you didn't bother. If you'd put as much effort as you did thinking about him every day into finding him, you guys probably could have had a solid three years before he croaked. And then maybe I'd be like, Yeah, scatter the ashes of the bridge. You spent your you know your um final innings together. But no. No, I d I'm getting riled up now. I'm getting riled up because this book and film tells us to be on the side of the adulterers, it tells us to accept that four days can define a lifetime of love. And it tells us to be on side with your family finding out and them having to be fine with finding out. No. Both of them can piss off in that regard. However, I do feel like the film is messier, in it meaning like it's realistically messier, not in the like way they filmed it, it's quite a beautifully shot film. Uh obviously Clinton Eastwood knows what he's doing with the camera, both in the film and behind the camera. Um and it sits better in real life, whereas I think the book is far more mythical. That being said, and I was very close to making a verdict, but I remember one key point. Right at the end, I didn't cry for the book or the film, didn't get me either one of them, 'cause I'm like, you've just had an affair, I don't really care. But the bit that got me in the book was to find out more about it. The author went and met with one of Robert Kincaid's friends. He didn't have many friends, but he did use to attend this guy's jazz, jazz club, and they shared beers from time to time, shared stories. He went to go shoot his photo, that was it. And he shot the best he made the best photo of this guy ever, and they became friends. And in the end, he spoke to this jazz musician about Francesca, and he goes, The guy didn't talk much, but when he started speaking about her, it all fell out of him. And I wrote a song, and one night I played it for him, and I'd play it every Tuesday for him, and he'd just look at me, raise a beer, and you could see he was just mulling over how he thought about her, and this was years, decades on from them meeting, and that got me. Don't know why. I guess that got me because it it in all in many ways it was an unrequited love, I guess, because he loved her this way, and she loved him too, but not enough to leave her wife her life behind. And I get it, she couldn't have left her life behind because she would have ruined her life and then also the affair because maybe the magic would have gone. She doesn't know, it's four days, you don't know the guy. But he had this love for her that he wanted to be able to give her, but he couldn't because situation, timing, everything, everything was wrong with the love that they had, and so that's what made me sad, I guess. And that is where the book for me that bit there, I wish they mentioned him in the film, but not enough. That jazz musician, that bit was key for me to being like that was so poignant and lovely, but it just isn't in the film at all. That being said though, the book is still too mythical, too wishy-washy, too much too much finesse to it, the way they talk to each other, there you know, they're so quippy with each other that it just it doesn't it doesn't play real to me. So for me, the film is better. And but however, that if you are wanting something sexier, the book is better. But I will end on the film the film being better. It's it's a e it's a very easy watch. If you do cry, tell me why. Because I don't get it. I don't get it. But that is it for this week, and welcome back. That was series two started episode one of series two. And like, subscribe if you haven't already. Follow me on all my TikToks and all that lot. I've got Better Dad Project, and then Is Is the Book Better? Uh, both of those I'm trying to be pretty active on. I'm doing a live after this. No, I'm not. Oh my god, imagine I knew how podcasts work. I'm gonna edit this podcast on live now, which is um Monday, the 24th of April. Uh 23rd of April, 22nd? I don't know. But that's what I'm doing now. I'm gonna go on live. So if you happen to have seen me on live, comment that you saw me. See if you know you popped up and get a few views. So I'm gonna edit this now, and I will see you next week, where I think we're gonna take on my first noir, my first noir thriller with The Third Man by Graham Green. Obviously, the film is Awesome Wells, and we'll see how that goes. Until then, be nice to each other. I've stolen that from Brett Goldstein. Bye.