Absolute Power | Clint Eastwood, 1997

Absolute Power | Clint Eastwood, 1997

A master thief on the run appears in his estranged daughter’s apartment disguised as a police officer. He stands still, arms by his side, head tilted. The photograph on the right is of his ex-wife, the mother of his daughter, who died a year earlier. The room itself is symmetrical but the composition is unbalanced, showing an open doorway on the left and part of a wall on the right. The shot, from the perspective of the daughter, suggests how unusual his presence is in her life. He awkwardly stands out among her belongings, pretending to be a figure of authority when in reality he’s anything but, while her mother’s picture creates a conflict between parents, drawing attention away from him and onto her memory, the pain his actions have caused, and the impossibility of recompense. This photograph seems to have been on the table for years, while her father could leave through the door at any moment.

Clint Eastwood: Breezy, Bird, The Bridges of Madison County

In August last year, I decided to write about every film Clint Eastwood has directed. This project lasted just one night before I abandoned it, but in that night I wrote briefly, as I do, about three films, all serendipitously beginning with the letter "B". Maybe this is something I'll return to.

Breezy | 1973

A romance complicated by nothing and everything. A teenager with flared-jeans and a guitar, a middle-aged businessman with an empty house and an unused fireplace. Preconceptions evaporate, love blossoms. He gives her an ocean and they’re dwarfed by the waves; she’s drained by the day and he carries her to bed. Their love moves with the tide, back and forth, vast and tempestuous. Sometimes he’s too old, sometimes she’s too young. Tennis and hitchhiking, a vodka martini and a Shirley Temple, an age gap, a black cloud. But he lit the fire for her. There was no warmth until she arrived. She makes his house a home.

Bird | 1988

A tragic life remembered from a hospital bed, an extraordinary artistry rendered in fragments and destroyed by addiction, a lack of balance, a spirit drained. Charlie Parker is already the virtuoso, the myth, the man in decline. The physicality of jazz embodied by a man for whom failure is both unendurable and inevitable. His family is in ruins, his old haunts have been turned into strip clubs, jazz makes way for rock and roll. He’s never on time but people won’t wait for him anymore. His art doesn’t sell. It’s over. The end of a scene. The end of Bird.

The Bridges of Madison County | 1995

An all-consuming love-affair embalmed by letters, diaries, photographs; souvenirs locked away and found again years later by adult children who never knew. A nostalgic reverence, a memory so beautiful because it almost made it but never did. A bridge between eras. A time before and a time after, and a brief window in which they’re together, unsustainably in love. He stands in the rain waiting for her. She finds shelter in her husband’s truck. A film of objects and (in)actions that shape their world, imbued with the ghost of lost love. And then a shared cremation: two lovers together again, under the bridge, forever free.

Flags of our Fathers | Clint Eastwood, 2006

Flags of Our Fathers | Clint Eastwood, 2006

"Looking at it, you could believe the sacrifice wasn't a waste."

A dessert served at a fundraising dinner held in honour of the three surviving subjects of Raising The Flag on Iwo Jima, an iconic photograph that became a sign of hope during World War II. The horror and tragedy that surrounds this picture is lost on American soil, where the war is seen in black and white and the blood is away from the headlines. But for these men, stolen from the front-line to become poster boys of war bonds, the blood is vivid red. As they're paraded around the country, their friends die on the battlefield. They're more valuable as symbols than as soldiers now, but, to them, their absence is the same as blood on their hands. And the photograph keeping them from war is now served to them on a plate, smothered in blood-red strawberry sauce. Symbols mean more than men. Images mean more than reality.

The Bridges of Madison County | Clint Eastwood, 1995

The Bridges of Madison County | Clint Eastwood, 1995

A man in love with a married woman stands in the street in the pouring rain, soaked to the skin, looking at her for the last time; a married woman looks back at the man she loves but can't have, also wet from the rain but sheltered in her husband's truck, knowing that when her husband returns she'll never see this man again. This brief love affair will live with them both forever, and perhaps her choice of shelter is a sensible one. But life is more beautiful out in the open, where you don't have to settle for just seeing the rain. You can feel it, too.