Mr. & Mrs. Bridge
by James Ivory
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Blythe Danner, Joanne Woodward, Kyra Sedgwick, Paul Newman, Simon CallowDirector: James Ivory
Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
Cinematographer: Tony Pierce-Roberts
Producer: Ismail Merchant
Writer: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Writer: Evan S. Connell
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 126 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-05-06
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Miramax
Movie Reviews of Mr. & Mrs. Bridge
Movie Review: Mr. and Mrs. Newman
Summary: 5 Stars
The movie follows the story of a couple, Walter and India Bridge (Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward), as they traverse the complexity of their long relationship as husband and wife and as parents to three children. The movie doesn't really have a plot, nothing really happens to move any story along. Instead the movie presents a series of vignettes that depicts different situations and events in their marriage from the mundane and unremarkable things to the more weighty things. All of those scenes were presented with such understated grace and simplicity. The movie doesn't exaggerate the emotions of the characters as well as consciously define the different characters in a black and white manner. There are wonderful and three dimensional characters in this movie that are elusive and flawed and vague, just like real human beings.
I think one of the most obvious differences between Walter and India is that Walter is someone whom emotions do not freely present itself to people. He's reserved and private. India is the exact opposite. The character in the course of the movie acted from being naive and optimist, to being hurt and disappointed, to being vulnerable and yearning, and to depressed and content. She's the most emotional character in the movie. And somehow because of that their love (the three dimensional kind, meaning no bells are ringing and no fireworks are exploding) for each other that made India want once in a while be verbalized just for reassurance.
Walter may not be the most ideal husband, but there's no doubt in my mind that he loves his wife. There's a scene in the movie where the couple had a fight and Walter tried to reassure his love for his wife by asking her to sit in his lap. Another scene is when he tried to console India after being hurt by his son's actions during a school activity by holding her hands without saying anything. I love how those little scenes were shown instead of being told.
The performances were topnotch. Some people say that Paul Newman was miscast and I could not disagree more. He was believable and understated. The role suits him quite well from the way the character looks and dresses, to that intellectual sound of his voice, and to that minimalist acting that he gave. Joanne Woodward provided a gamut of emotions in her performance in the most unaffected and realistic way. She's a knockout in this movie.
In the end we learned that Walter's son and his son became lawyers just like him and formed the firm Bridges and Bridges and Bridges. That pretty much implies how Walter was able to pass on his emotional detachment. How basically his son and his grandson would turn out just like him. But the movie doesn't really have an ending. This is one of those movies that doesn't seem to have any conclusions. The movie ended in the same manner the movie started, a glimpse in the life of an ordinary family doing ordinary things.
Grade: A-
Summary of Mr. & Mrs. Bridge
MR. & MRS. BRIDGE - DVD MovieMasters in depicting the superficial machinations of England's repressed upper classes, director James Ivory and his partners, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and producer Ismail Merchant, take on the American middle class in Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. Paul Newman and wife Joanne Woodward play the eponymous main characters: a patriarch and wife of a well-to-do family, whose members are struggling to define themselves under their father's undefiable command and the changing times.
With one daughter who wants to become an actress in New York, another who chooses the "wrong" kind of man to marry, and a son who quits school to join the Air Force during World War II, Mr. Bridge finds that his control over his family is slipping. Spanning the 1930s and '40s, the film presents nuances in how both the dramatic and the smaller moments are woven together. Weddings and arguments are no more important to capturing the essence of the Bridge family then are their moments of daily reverie.
A quiet film that succeeds in establishing its characters' intimacy, with themselves and each other, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge owes much of that success to Woodward. While Newman doesn't always seem comfortable as the stern ruler of the Bridge household, Woodward steals the film as the long-suffering woman whose identity is precariously built on her ascribed roles as mother and wife, taken for granted and often overlooked by the family she truly loves. --Natasha Senjanovic
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