Customer Reviews

The Bridge

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

One of the pure joys (a word I use intentionally considering its disturbing connotations in this context) of the documentary is the element of challenge--to undertake a concept that brings up more questions than answers, more complexity than simplicity. When the proper challenge is identified, it is the talented film maker who explores rather than concludes, who looks for the range of possibility and concern, the mirror of real life if you will, rather than find an oversimplified answer to everything.

And this is where this film succeeds immensely.

The Golden Gate Bridge is evidently one of the most popular spots for suicide in the world. In 2004, when this film was shot, 24 people threw themselves from it. And Eric Steel, shooting the bridge from various angles during this year, caught several of those suicides.

There is an ethical discussion to be had about the premise of the film alone, an effort to capture suicides on film rather than prevent them from happening. But Steel's handling of these events is far more human and considerate than the manipulative handling of so-called reality shows, where the people are but spectacles who can be maneuvered and edited in any which way to get a pre-desired end. Steel takes these suicides and studies them by talking to the deceased's relatives and friends, or people who witnessed the event, to look at not only the impact of suicide and mental illness, but also the effects of relationships, of living through the day-to-day and not wanting (or not expecting) such events of drama in their lives.

The ranges of attitudes regarding mental illness alone are well worth watching this movie for. From a couple of kiters who are so into their sport that they cannot relate at all to a person's desire to hurl himself to his own death, to parents who have to live with the fact that their own son will most likely find a way to kill himself (and eventually does). People who live with regret for their own actions (or lack thereof) or anger at a loved one for leaving them in that way. The suicides in this film are not presented in any way to glorify them. Instead, each and every person who jumps (or who attempts to jump) comes across as scared and confused. The jumper who survives his attempt describes it best when he says how he was determined to die until his hands actually let go of the rail, at which point he knew that he didn't want to die anymore. Every jumper in this film comes across as a frightened and confused person, even a guy who seems to be talking almost casually on a phone before he climbs up onto a rail, crosses himself and goes.

The story of Gene, the thread that is carried through the movie as we see a man in black with a long mop of curly hair pace back and forth along the bridge as though either looking for the right spot or trying to convince himself to finally go through with it, is probably the most compelling for the essence of painful tragedy involved. His death caps off the film perfectly--it is both sad and shocking, and definitely a punch in the gut. Steel takes a highly difficult subject that many people should be enraged and shocked by, and he treats it more as a story of the survivors and our own confusion towards this compulsion and determination. Alas, these are human beings after all, so we are compelled to find some way to cope with the fact that our own can be so flawed.

I spotted this film by randomly surfing my channel guide on Sat TV and watched it on IFC May 8. The program description actually left me in a state of disbelief; there's no way they could do an entire documentary on suicidal plunges from this bridge, can they? They sure did. It's an amazing piece of journalism into what others have already described as taboo in normal journalism. The comments from the families and friends of the jumpers weave the story together incredibly. The documentary was inspired by a New Yorker magazine article called "Jumpers" about the same subject matter. The Golden Gate Bridge has more suicides at that one location than any other place on earth. Morbid at times as others described here, but relentlessly compelling as we watch the film progess and try to figure out why in the hell this bridge has a strange and fatal attraction for those who are so mentally disturbed, they'll hurl themselves over to a watery death. Incredibly, one attempt is thwarted by a tourist taking pictures that is captured on film. And one jumper who actually survived (his jump was not caught on film) tells what it's like to fall from such a staggering height into the bay. He describes how when he let go of the rail of the bridge, he immediately regretted his decision to jump and as he fell he readjusted his body hoping to have the least impact when he hit the water in the hopes of somehow surviving, which he did. But the fatal leaps interspliced with real life perspectives from those who knew the jumpers are in fact strangely fascinating. Fascinating mostly because the local and national media normally just don't care to report suicides with justified reasons. It's a glimpse into an area that is largely ignored, yet intriguing to look at because it is so rare to hear from the associates of those who choose to end their own lives. And some of the footage of the leaps, we really haven't seen such gripping, horrifying and again, morbidly compelling footage since the dark days of Sept. 11, 2001, when victims of the terrorist attacks in the Twin Towers jumped to their deaths for obviously different reasons.

_The Bridge_ was inspired by a 2003 New Yorker article called "Jumpers" by Tad Friend.

The most disturbing, and the most controversial, aspect of the film is that you witness actual suicides as they take place. Steel was able to capture nearly all the suicides that took place in 2004 by setting up cameras and letting them run. Steel then interviewed friends and family members of people who jumped. What emerges is a story about intense pain and desperation, people who felt they were somehow on the outside of life. What also emerges is a story about the rest of us who really don't want to know about such things because they bring us pain.

It's been nearly week since I saw the film, and I'm still haunted by the images, the people. I can't shake the thought that I witnessed their last act. One of them was a young man named Gene. I keep seeing him in my mind's eye, walking up and down the railing, his long black hair flying in the wind, waiting, searching, for the right moment to jump.

This, of course, is Eric Steel's intent: I'm not supposed to be able to shake the images. I'm supposed to be disturbed by them.

Watching, I thought of W.H. Auden's poem, "Musee des Beaux Arts":


About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening
a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

1940

Steel wants viewers to make the connection to Auden's poem, I think. The spirit of the poem is suggested in the imagery several times. Steel shows us that suffering takes place all around us. Yet we don't notice because we have "somewhere to get to." We sail "calmly on."

If you're looking for light entertainment or factual documentary, this film is not for you. I love dark themes and thought-provoking material, and I don't think anything else I've ever seen matches the intensity of this film. _The Bridge_ will encourage viewers to think deeply about artistic and social responsibility. And the film will engage you in a little known or thought about aspect of life.

When I asked my husband what movie we were watching tonight and he gave me this films description, I was immediately repulsed. I argued with him about watching such a depressing film and pretty much begged him to find something else on TV. I had no interest in watching people leap to their deaths and then listen to their families as they morn their lost loved ones.

As is usually the case in remote control wars in my home, I lost. So I grabbed my book and settled in to ignore the tube. Five minutes into it, my book was forgotten and I was riveted. As silly as this may sound, it wasn't as depressing as I thought it would be. It's shocking, disturbing, sad and tragic, but more than that it's fascinating. I could not believe how many people have killed themselves on that bridge. It's frightening.

I was really against watching this film as I have had two people I have loved deeply commit suicide. There isn't a pain on this earth that is comparable to the pain that friends and family experience after someone kills themselves. I didn't want to watch others go through what I have already gone through, I thought it would be too hard. Surprisingly the friends and families are at a place in the grieving process where they have accepted what happened and some even understand why it happened. A lot of the people who jumped had a history of mental illness or some sort of long term problems. One father seemed to find his peace by thinking his son was finally got what he wanted, that he was finally happy.

The absolute desperation these people must have felt to take such a terrifying leap is palpable. It's impossible to not feel empathy for all those involved. Despite the subject matter, it's not a gory film and it doesn't glorify, over dramatize, or try to play with the sympathies and emotions of the viewer. I am not sure what purpose this film serves, but for me it helped me see the suicides of my loved ones in a little different light, maybe I won't be so angry anymore, maybe I can find my peace in their peace.

Cherise Everhard, May 2008

This documentary shows images you will not forget. It also follows the journey of several people, including my sister. Our family was devastated by her decision to jump off the bridge. This was an extremely difficult movie for our family to watch.
In some of the reviews, people stated they would have liked to have seen the bridge staff or coast guard interviewed to round out the movie. If you understand how the movie was made, you would realize that would not have been possible. We were interviewed 3 months after my sister jumped, not knowing any footage had been filmed at the bridge until the following year. Would we have participated if we knew? Absolutely not. The permits needed to film the bridge for the year 2004 did not specify they were looking for jumpers. They were implying "a year in the life of a bridge". Now that we have seen this film, we are very grateful that the director, Eric Steel was true to his word by not sensationalizing these events. I think he made it as sensitive as possible for a subject like this.
This film is not for everyone. These are truly real people in their last moments. The thought and the images can haunt you for a very long time.
If this film can help anyone think twice about suicide, it was worth our participation in the documentary.

Please be aware what you are ordering - a documentary that shows, at times in closeups, real people jumping to their deaths off of the Golden Gate Bridge. That being said, I saw this film at the Tribeca Film Festival and was talking about it for months. I am going to buy the dvd, and though the movie is not happy it does put a face on suffering that is compelling to watch. In an interview after the Tribeca screening, the director said that he was interested by this subject after watching people jump from the towers on 9/11. He said that they were jumping to avoid the fire inside the building, and those that leap from the Golden Gate jump to avoid the fire inside themselves. It really changes how you view life and death - I highly recommend (though the subject matter is not for everyone). It is not gory, you just see the splashes, but you see people's last moments on earth. You will be talking about it with those you love.

When I visited San Francisco last year, I honestly didn't know that the Golden Gate Bridge was the one place on planet earth in which the most suicides were carried out: roughly one self-inflicted death has occurred there every two weeks for the past seventy years. All I knew then was that the majestic bridge was awe-inspiring, and walking its length was one of the highlights of my west coast trip. Recently, though, my feelings about that fabled location changed, most likely forever, and I attribute that up to Eric Steel's documentary The Bridge.

I credit Steel with the lack of sensationalism in this disturbing but somehow dignified film. It is the work of an entire year of patient filming alongside the Golden Gate Bridge, and it is an undertaking which I'm sure will never be duplicated by any other American filmmaker. The entire tone of the movie is one of hushed, subdued stillness, and Steel does not intrude with commentary or judgment, merely focuses in on each death and provides a background to these individual tragedies. There is horror here in this subject, and yet I, someone highly vulnerable to the effects of sad events caught on tape, could not help but look on during each frame of this production, start to finish. I looked on, even as I felt the weight of loss steal into me and set my heart pounding. There was not one suicide Steel showed during which I did not want to cry out and somehow wish away what I was seeing before me, these people who were one moment alive and then they were not. "Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it," I kept thinking. And yet during the run-time nearly two-dozen people jumped and died.

I literally did not sleep the night I saw this DVD.

The Bridge is among the most powerful examples of filmmaking I have witnessed, and it is life-changing. I can honestly admit that now, a year after my first visit to the Golden Gate Bridge, I'm not sure I'd want to go back. And if I did I could never again walk across that soaring space without a keen awareness that I was passing across a site on which over 1200 people knew such misery that they threw themselves outward into death: a concept that smothers me with incomprehensible dread.

The Bridge deserves five stars. It is great. But please be aware before you see it that what you'll watch in its ninety minutes will never leave your mind.

This is especially personal for me. The subject was handled in an incredibly dignified manner and I hope it can ease pain or at at least create an understanding of the subject of deep mental anguish and what those who are effected go through. Watch it and discuss among close friends and family. You may open wounds but the healing needs to be started.

Within minutes into watching "The Bridge" you begin to feel the intensity of what this film is about. For me, at the beginning of the film, there is a comparison made between "a celebration of life" (a wind surfer riding the waves beneath the Golden Gates, celebrating one of the most beautiful places on the face of our earth) and someone above feeling the exact opposite and acting upon their own set of feelings. The opening of this film took me be surprise despite knowing what the film was about when it started.

The Bridge is about "place". How can ONE place be chosen so often for an activity such as suicide?

The Bridge is about 'time'. How can ONE place be chosen time and time again to 'end time'?

The Bridge is about "decision". Seeing people... really seeing people, make and commit to a decision to end their lives has a chilling effect for sure. And while going to the bridge may be a decision in and of itself, that final moment, that moment that is less than a split second in length, is a moment of self-decision unlike any other. It is, well... so final and SO impacting.

The Bridge is about "people". It is about the people who elect to end their lives at the bridge. It is about the people they leave behind, and it is about the people who see them in their final moment, the people who just happen to be there. And, so, in some way, The Bridge is about "chance" as well.

The Bridge is not like any other film I have ever seen. It is one of a kind. It is powerful in a way no other film could be. It is true, and its impact is lasting. The imagery emblazoned itself upon me and is cause to think, stop, listen, pay attention to and attempt to understand human existence, glory, sadness, pain, suffering, and most of all decision.

It is not a film for everyone, yet everyone should take the time to see it.

There have been times in my life where the dark cloud that haunted me didn't seem to want to go away. I've had suicidal thoughts over the years with my battle with cancer and there have been times that I thought about jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. What this film did for me was make me realize that I really want to live. Thank you Eric Steel for bringing a taboo topic out into the open, but for also showing me that no matter how bad my life seems that I'm not ready to give up yet. I feel stronger for having seen The Bridge.