The Bridge

Conscience doth make cowards of us all?

The Bridge addresses the topic of suicide, and specifically concerns the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco, that great monument to human creativity and ingenuity that has, over the decades, become a lightening rod for desperate people dangling at the ends of their ropes. In 2004 alone, this documentary informs us, 24 people climbed its rails and jumped to their deaths. Countless city and state officials have lobbied to get a safety net placed somewhere underneath the bridge in order to make suicide at least more difficult; such attempts have failed (no sufficient funds, so proclaims the overruling powers that be), and the deaths have continued.

The film I recalled the most as I watched The Bridge, produced and directed by Eric Steel, was curiously Errol Morris’ documentary Gates of Heaven (1978), which dealt with a pet cemetery just outside San Francisco. It also addressed the nature of death and the simultaneously silencing and deafening effect that it has on us those of us who still linger in this world. Morris has an unparalleled ability to set his lens on a person and allow them to speak their mind and even ramble off on a variety of unrelated topics; it is a strategy that all the while reveals hidden longing and despair underneath the interviewees’ grunts, pauses, and hesitations. Suicide is one of the most important of premises, and it seems like the kind of topic with which Morris would feel right at home. If only he had been the director, this might have been a different write-up altogether.

There are isolated moments when The Bridge nearly succeeds at being moving and probing. Long, absorbing passages that simply focus on various people staring over the rails, for example, force us to wonder what they are thinking, and it leads to compelling silence from both the filmmakers and the viewers. But no narrative or idea in the rest of the film ever seem to understand what Morris intrinsically knows: That the truth is found in what is unspoken more that it is in what is revealed. Steel dances on the precipice of profound with heartbreaking footage and then retreats back into mundane with its attempts to give justifying context to these images. The problem is that the context isn’t convincing, and it is instead quite angering.

The film’s primary note of controversy is that it actually captures at least half-a-dozen suicides on film—some fuzzy and out of focus, some so remarkably clear that we witness a fellow cross himself before he plunges to his death. The clearest of the suicides belongs to a long-haired young man in a leather jacket; he is seen stalking the bridge for quite some time before he finally jumps. The camera watches him fall all the way down, and we actually see his contact with the water. His name is Gene, we are informed. His story becomes the primary thread connecting all the others together, though it’s not any more or less interesting than any of the others—I guess he was specifically chosen because the footage of his suicide is the clearest.

Many of the film’s detractors accuse the suicide footage of being exploitive and distasteful. I found them to be neither. Yes, Steel set up his camera on the outskirts of the bridge to specifically capture suicides. But it is pretty apparent that from so far away, those who jumped were practically indistinguishable from others who simply looked thoughtfully over the railing; the jumpers simply made their decisions before Steel or anyone else could call the police (we see several who are stopped from jumping as well). I do not know how long the camera rested on Gene before he jumped, but until the last moment, he honestly just looks like an average man without destructive tendencies. Which is sort of the point: We can never get inside someone’s head and know why they make choices like this. The death scenes are handled with taste, and are do not feel like they are inserted for shock value. They are intended as meditations.

The primary flaw here is the nature of these meditations: Instead of exploring why people would make such a terrible choice, Steel would apparently rather have us believe that it was fate that led Gene and the others do so what they did. This view just doesn’t sit well with me: I don’t require a documentary to reveal new thoughts on a subject like suicide—as one character sadly notes, “How can we know why a person would do this? We can only hope that their pain is over and they are in a better place,”—but I do wonder why Steel chose to address this film with a tone that essentially plays the same derivative note over and over again. He interviews family members and friends who admit that the jumpers were having hard times, and then they all seem to shrug and confess, “We couldn’t stop them, so we didn’t try. Maybe they’re better off now.” This might be their coping device, but it’s frustrating to see their interviews stop there. Steel allows them this sentiment, but for the most part he never stops and wonders if they actually believe this common refrain or if they are merely trying to comfort themselves and justify their indifferent lethargy in the face of their friends’ self-implemented ends. They all apparently think that their dead loved ones are all the better for hurling themselves off the Golden Gate. Am I the only one who finds this mentality a little absurd and dangerously inviting to anyone watching this film who is considering a similar exit strategy?

I can say with absolute honesty that I’ve never personally considered suicide. I’ve often wondered what would cause anyone to want to “end it all,” but I suppose I’ve never taken my life seriously enough—as much as I enjoy living it—to allow such despair to overtake me. I’ve experienced a great deal of pain, betrayal, and disappointment that make me realize that life is difficult and often unpleasant, but then I think of that wonderful paraplegic man in Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi (2006), who admits that he has not given up because “I still like the warmth of the sun on my face.” In such simple pleasures, I find motivation to continue my participation in this complex world. On a similar note, I talked someone out of suicide a few years ago; he was perilously on the brink, and I softly pleaded with him, told him that there were still plenty of things to live for. He told me later that it was just one line I said that definitely persuaded him not to follow through with it: Most people who commit suicide don’t really want to die; they just want the pain to stop. I don’t even specifically remember telling him these words, but he does; he claims that it made all the difference.

I’m recounting this story because it’s the kind of observation that The Bridge sorely lacks. The film chronicles, through testimonies of loved ones, the lives of some of the 24 who jumped in 2004, but the folks interviewed never recall moments when they seriously sat down with these people and attempted to talk them out of death. In an extraordinarily bizarre passage, a woman admits, “I knew Gene wanted to die. So I told him that before he did it, he’d better call and say goodbye.” She’s recalling this conversation as if Gene were simply headed out for an extended vacation in Tahiti. And later, parents of a young man who jumped admit, “In a way, his death was kind of relieving. He wanted it, so we didn’t try to stop him.” Forgive me if I am idealistic, but has the idea of suicide become such a romantic release that we accept it from our loved ones so fleetingly? Those interviewed seem to sincerely love the fallen, but never once do we note any compelling degree of urgency in their voices, any definitive moment when they were willing to put their daily occupations on hold long enough to plead with their friends to pull themselves the hell together. They all seem numb, complacent, and resolved to the decisions of their sons and friends and lovers and siblings.

Two survivors are interviewed; both are open and honest about their attempts at suicide. One is apologetic for wanting to die and another who is regretful for changing his mind about jumping. We have a sinking feeling that this encounter with the bridge is neither the first nor last time that the latter will stare longingly into the void of ultimate self-destruction. The former on the other hand has since found religion, and his jump off the bridge became a turning point in a series of painful experiences that made him realize, as he plummeted to assured doom, that he absolutely did not want to die. “It wasn’t my turn to go,” he reflects. “I lay in the water, much of my body crushed, and the only thing holding me up was a seal that swam circles around me. You cannot convince me that the seal was not God.”

I’m not about to question this fellow’s convictions, but within the framework of Steel’s film, it’s a little problematic: As family members so flippantly admit that the jumpers’ decisions could not be helped, it sounds as if God only saved this young man because, in what were meant to be his final moments, he changed his mind about wanting death. I wish some thought was given to similar hesitations that potentially existed in those who didn’t survive, instead of merely surrendering to the notion that their ends were inevitable last steps of sad journeys. Damn it all, these journeys didn’t end—they were cut short, and it could have been prevented! Where are these people’s even dim exigencies to fight, or their loved ones’ rush to fight for them? Can we so easily believe that such spit only exists in this young man who survived? The ho-hum approach to all the other testimonies completely undermines this extraordinary man’s personal religious belief, because it suggests that he alone was saved because he wanted it, whereas the others were peacefully resolved to their fates. What he thinks is God’s mercy merely becomes God’s obvious choice, if we are to believe this film.

When I listen to the majority these interviews, am forced to conclude that either 1) Steel edited these conversations and removed any narration revealing sentiments beyond resolved acceptance, or 2) these people actually believed that their friends’ deaths were for the best. If the former is the case, shame on Steel. If it is a case of that latter, I suppose that Steel cannot help what those he interviewed said about the lost souls who jumped, but he should have recognized the self-defeating tone that these conversations were taking and reconsidered his thematic strategy.

Instead, the sole authentically reflective moment in The Bridge comes when a visiting firefighter recounts how he rescued a girl who was literally seconds away from jumping. He says that he began by taking pictures of her as she crawled over the rail, and then he provides a revealing admission: “At first, it was as if taking those pictures made what she was doing not real. It was only when I put the camera down that I realized what was actually happening.” We cut to the footage of his successful rescue attempt; he reaches down and grabs the girl, pulling her back over the rail and stopping her from being the statistical number 25.

It is wonderful, life-affirming footage. It is also an unwitting critique of the film that surrounds it. This girl’s actions could not be interpreted through the lens of a camera; it had to be experienced and realized by the only one near enough to save her, once he put his camera down. As we watch Gene and the others throw themselves from the rails of the Golden Gate Bridge, we realize that Steel shot this footage because he ultimately didn’t think to turn his camera off. For all his good intentions, his film’s own sluggish attitude toward suicide renders this footage empty as it jumps from the rail of the bridge and slaps him despairingly in the face.

Featuring:
Kevin and Patrick Hines
Rachel Marker
Tara Harrell
Carolyn Presley
Wally and Mary Manikow
Matt Jenn Rossi
Rich Waters
Ginny Matthews
Shelley Albar.

An IFC release for a film by Easy There Tiger Productions. Written, directed, and produced by Eric Steel. Rated R, for some language and authentic footage of suicide. Running time: 93 minutes. Original United States theatrical release date: October 27, 2006 (limited).