This is the end.
"The Bridge," Eric Steel's chilling masterpiece exploring the yawning chasm between life and death, between the steel suspension of the Golden Gate Bridge and the cold hard surface of the water below in San Francisco Bay, is now available on DVD. It's a film that goes deeper into that void of despair and self-obliteration than any film I've ever seen. I wrote about it several times in 2006:
A movie that takes suicide seriously, and considers the pain of the person who wishes to die as well as the anguish and guilt of the survivors, is a rarity. Over and over, survivors say they don't understand why someone they knew and loved wanted to cease to exist; but a surprising number admit the agony that would drive someone to suicide is beyond their imagination. They have to accept, and respect, that it was real.From my review in the Chicago Sun-Times:A father says: "“Some people say the body is a temple. He thought his body was a cage, a prison. In his mind, he knew he was loved, that he had everything and could do anything. And yet he felt trapped, and that was the only way he could get free.�? "The Bridge" makes the unthinkable, taboo subject of suicide real in honest and realistic ways that maybe even those who have never considered it can understand. The mother of a jumper recalls it took someone else to finally get her to realize: "It's not about you. It has nothing to do with you." That may be as hard for some to get their heads around as the suicide itself. Suicide is the ultimate solipsistic act; it's not about anyone else.
The few, mostly superficial discussions of suicide we have in our culture (30,000+ in the U.S. in an average year; only about 25 or so off the Golden Gate, which is nevertheless the world's leading suicide destination), tend to objectify the suicidal person and concentrate on prevention and grief and downplaying the reality out of fear that others may be encouraged to try it. Copycat incidents are real, but peer pressure is not one of the leading causes of suicide -- particularly off the Golden Gate Bridge. It takes a certain kind of personality to choose such a dramatic, public exit, and the bridge is already famous as a suicide spot.
It's an awesome sight from up there, the wind and dizzying height halting your breath as you gaze across the strait. The sun makes silver ripples on the churning blue-green water and the horizon glows blindingly bright at the time of day when the sky and the sea converge. The cliffs, crinkled with shadows, form a paradisiacal gateway. And then, in the periphery, there's a tiny momentary rupture in the mythical postcard landscape. A small white splash flickers in the water. And in the great bright cacophony of the scene, Icarus disappears beneath the surface.That's a description of Peter Breughel's painting, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," and William Carlos Williams' poem by the same name, intermingling with images from Eric Steel's "The Bridge," a film about 24 deaths and one survivor in a year in the life of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. "The Bridge" consciously invokes Brueghel, and after I'd watched the movie and looked up the painting again, hundreds of images of the Golden Gate from "The Bridge" (and my memory) came rushing back to me, as though projected at high speed over Breughel's canvas. Each small white splash, of course, marks the end of a life. [...]
Witnessing the last few moments of these people's existence, I thought of Michael Apted's "Up" documentaries, which have followed the contours of a handful of lives for 49 years now, revisiting them at seven-year intervals. "The Bridge" views human life from the other end of the spectrum -- showing the end, and then working back from there.
And because these jumpers chose such an open and public way to end their lives, I have no ethical problem with what the cameras observe; amateur photographers often catch the same sights inadvertently. One survivor tells of being interrupted by a German tourist who asked him to take her picture, just as he was preparing to jump.
Looking this closely and intently into suicide, you almost fear too much empathy, the way you dread the vertigo that accompanies acrophobia: What you're afraid of is not so much that you might fall, but that impulse within you that wants to eliminate the yawning tension between you and the surface below....
"The Bridge" is brave and unflinching, unshakably haunting and deeply mysterious. I doubt I'll forget it until the day I die.
This is one of those movies that I've wanted to see but am afraid to--partial shame (what will the Netflix people think of me? Will my fiancee be alarmed? It's like renting hardcore porn--but pornography has an established, public place in our culture that suicide has never achieved) and partial fear of the darker yearnings of the soul; sure, I can say it's for artistic appreciation or intellectual curiosity, but who are we kidding, really? Who doesn't have a side that's tempted, just a bit? Everyone in the world has fantasized about suicide at some point--from the Tom Sawyer type "everyone crying at my funeral" self indulgent daydreaming to constant, wearing depression where death becomes a siren call--and to see such a stark outline of the actual act is disturbing.
One thing that strikes my from your writing is that the film seems to keep away from the usual version of the "selfish" argument, that suicide is the ultimate selfish act. From a loved one's standpoint, it certainly is, but in the suicide's view, selfishness is utterly beside the point. There is no human connection left to be lost--only a final solution.
From Jen's comment above I'm reminded of Sylvia Plath sealing off the room with wet towels, before the act. Then again, her life and death have become almost a textbook example - maybe too well known to elicit any real emotions.
The film has powerful images and its mood is slow and heavy. It washes over you. The only trouble is, the interviews are so rarely revealing about human nature. They're actually pretty boring. The filmmaker seems a good director but a poor interviewer. Compare it with the interviews in "Gates of Heaven" and you'll see the vast chasm between the two films.
Interesting note on the interviews, Reilly. Many of them contain descriptions and the typical "how they saw the jumpers" insights. But I think they stand out more for how they serve to connect those who jump to the "reality" of every life, signified by all the tourists walking across the bridge and all the cars driving back and forth. It's a strong connection to make, and based on the interviews, none of the interviewees seem like they would even consider looking over the edge of a bridge and consider ending it all. So the insights offered by the interviews are less about those who take their lives than how the rest of the world reacts to those people, how they frame their identities, how they justify and/or blame, and deal with their own dark thoughts. It's a totally different thought process, and I found it a strong juxtaposition to the images of the men and women pacing back and forth before climbing the fence and plummeting to the depths below.