The Bridge
Aug. 1st, 2007 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenI forgot to mention in the last post how violently I want to have Anna Quindlen's babies, but I hope that was understood. All good? Fine, then let us procede onto more serious things.
And I ain't kidding about how serious a thing The Bridge was all about. If you missed mention of this last year, the loss is yours. I've watched plenty of documentaries in the past few months, and this one probably disturbed me the most. I cried harder at Deliver Us From Evil, but this one spoke to me more because it involves a familiar place and a universal feeling.
The Bridge documents a year in the life of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and the twenty-four people who killed themselves by jumping off of it in that year. I read the review on The New York Times, and I almost stopped breathing while I read it, as if it would break the spell. Because it just seemed at once both abhorrent and fascinating that anyone would think to do that. (The crew, it turns out were inspired by this article in The New Yorker, which I absolutely am reading at the next chance I get.)
I finally got my copy from Netflix (there was, not surprisingly, a long wait on this one) last night. The opening is the introduction to what would be an hour and a half of suspense and horror. You get the usual establishing shots to determine place, character of the people inhabiting surroundings, that sort of thing. Without knowing it, you see, I think, three or four of the people you will eventually see plunge to their deaths. It's that sort of set up that left me something of a nervous wreck throughout the movie. Like the crew explains in the accompanying making-of featurette, you look for who you think is a likely candidate to jump, but you're more often than not surprised.
The opening just stole my ability to think or breathe. After shots of kids with "loner" written all over them, of single women looking wistfully out to sea or back on San Francisco, a man who might be someone's elderly father on a stroll to get out of the house climbs a barrier with difficulty. Weirdly, everything about it makes you want to laugh. There's something to him that reminds me of my Dad--the hat and sunglasses and general posture, perhaps. He has to push himself up off the walkway, bouncing on one foot while the other is wedged between two slats in the barrier, until he has one leg swung over. I started to tear up, but I was still a second away from bursting out with one, great, "Hah!" Because this was ludicrous! This was a stunt...
He rocked forward, back, and then let go and fell.
He just...fell. Fast. Flailing. His hat flew off and I could never concentrate on what happened to his sunglasses even though that was the most absurdly pressing thing on my mind (and I rewound the thing three times to make sense of it) as the camera panned down and tried to catch him when no one else could. Even the camera missed him, going too fast and hitting water before the man did then jumping back up, frantic to find him. It never did. Nor did anyone find three of the twenty-four who jumped and died in the year the footage was shot.
In total, they show four or five people from the bridge to the water falling to their deaths. Interspersed between are ominous shots of the bridge that will, at random, be brought to full-stop with a splash period. That's what I meant about the terror and suspense of watching this movie. You see the gorgeous, often fog-covered (though not as much in the film as in real life) bridge looking so out-of-place, almost celestially (and, at once, mechanically) marvelous. And, every so often, you see nothing but a splash. Each one is a story you don't know and can't, despite the testimonials of witnesses, friends, and families, ever understand.
And yet? You understand it. You know it's selfish and wrong. You also can't look away. Each person that the camera picks out who eventually jumps scares you to pieces. My heart hammered. First time since bungie jumping (or thinking about it) that it beat with that crazy/scary fear/exhiliration. Because you know, standing up there, if you've ever been on a bridge, but especially that one, how amazing it would be to look down and out with nothing in your way. Breath-taking on every level.
If there was controversy over this film, I missed it, but it's easy to see why this seems like morbid, ghoulish entertainment. There are few, if any, sections dedicated to moralizing about suicide and how awful it is. A lot of the people interviewed were very angry and hurt by their loved ones' decisions, but many were eerily understanding of it. The people who do this are not cry-for-help people. These are people who've threatened, maybe tried before, but who've moved past the point of being believed which is exactly how they "succeed" in jumping off the bridge. On the other hand, nothing is at all entertaining as watching people die on film. It really emphasizes--for me--how very pathetic Hollywood or any fictional movie death has ever been. It's upsetting as all get out, but so necessary to see.
Why the Golden Gate? Is the question of the film, since they can't answer for the individuals, even with the words of relatives and loved ones to give clues. I think the friend of the suicide you follow throughout the film (and who "completes" at the end for a climax in a way that is not anything like as cheap as that sounds, I promise) said it best: "There's a kind of false romance about the bridge."
I think she's exactly right. The bright color of the Golden Gate stands out against the pasty colors of the low houses and wet-and-dry scrubland of San Francisco over which it towers. The architecture is old enough to be exotic, but familiar enough not to be mustily historical. It has the promise of when it was built, of a future only on the up, up, up. Rising out of the mist, it's familiar, friendly sight at the same time that it's an imposing, domineering giant. Jumping off it, you hope to marr its perfection but also to merge with it, I imagine. The grandeur of such a gesture does translate to the non-suicidal.
I have walked across that bridge at least three or four times in my life, and it never gets old. It's just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I always feel like laughing on that bridge, which might explain my inappropriate reaction to the first suicide I saw off of it in the movie. It really does sweep you up.
I highly recommend The Bridge, by the by. It's not wall-to-wall depressing as it might seem. The most brilliant thing in the world is watching a photographer struggle with the same incredulous reaction as you, the viewer, as he photographs a girl out on the ledge and moves past the lethargy, the inherent, "Surely not!" reaction we all have to being confronted with someone who wants to die when we, ourselves, are in the prime of our lives, to reach out and pull her back. Bawled like mad at that.
And I ain't kidding about how serious a thing The Bridge was all about. If you missed mention of this last year, the loss is yours. I've watched plenty of documentaries in the past few months, and this one probably disturbed me the most. I cried harder at Deliver Us From Evil, but this one spoke to me more because it involves a familiar place and a universal feeling.
The Bridge documents a year in the life of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and the twenty-four people who killed themselves by jumping off of it in that year. I read the review on The New York Times, and I almost stopped breathing while I read it, as if it would break the spell. Because it just seemed at once both abhorrent and fascinating that anyone would think to do that. (The crew, it turns out were inspired by this article in The New Yorker, which I absolutely am reading at the next chance I get.)
I finally got my copy from Netflix (there was, not surprisingly, a long wait on this one) last night. The opening is the introduction to what would be an hour and a half of suspense and horror. You get the usual establishing shots to determine place, character of the people inhabiting surroundings, that sort of thing. Without knowing it, you see, I think, three or four of the people you will eventually see plunge to their deaths. It's that sort of set up that left me something of a nervous wreck throughout the movie. Like the crew explains in the accompanying making-of featurette, you look for who you think is a likely candidate to jump, but you're more often than not surprised.
The opening just stole my ability to think or breathe. After shots of kids with "loner" written all over them, of single women looking wistfully out to sea or back on San Francisco, a man who might be someone's elderly father on a stroll to get out of the house climbs a barrier with difficulty. Weirdly, everything about it makes you want to laugh. There's something to him that reminds me of my Dad--the hat and sunglasses and general posture, perhaps. He has to push himself up off the walkway, bouncing on one foot while the other is wedged between two slats in the barrier, until he has one leg swung over. I started to tear up, but I was still a second away from bursting out with one, great, "Hah!" Because this was ludicrous! This was a stunt...
He rocked forward, back, and then let go and fell.
He just...fell. Fast. Flailing. His hat flew off and I could never concentrate on what happened to his sunglasses even though that was the most absurdly pressing thing on my mind (and I rewound the thing three times to make sense of it) as the camera panned down and tried to catch him when no one else could. Even the camera missed him, going too fast and hitting water before the man did then jumping back up, frantic to find him. It never did. Nor did anyone find three of the twenty-four who jumped and died in the year the footage was shot.
In total, they show four or five people from the bridge to the water falling to their deaths. Interspersed between are ominous shots of the bridge that will, at random, be brought to full-stop with a splash period. That's what I meant about the terror and suspense of watching this movie. You see the gorgeous, often fog-covered (though not as much in the film as in real life) bridge looking so out-of-place, almost celestially (and, at once, mechanically) marvelous. And, every so often, you see nothing but a splash. Each one is a story you don't know and can't, despite the testimonials of witnesses, friends, and families, ever understand.
And yet? You understand it. You know it's selfish and wrong. You also can't look away. Each person that the camera picks out who eventually jumps scares you to pieces. My heart hammered. First time since bungie jumping (or thinking about it) that it beat with that crazy/scary fear/exhiliration. Because you know, standing up there, if you've ever been on a bridge, but especially that one, how amazing it would be to look down and out with nothing in your way. Breath-taking on every level.
If there was controversy over this film, I missed it, but it's easy to see why this seems like morbid, ghoulish entertainment. There are few, if any, sections dedicated to moralizing about suicide and how awful it is. A lot of the people interviewed were very angry and hurt by their loved ones' decisions, but many were eerily understanding of it. The people who do this are not cry-for-help people. These are people who've threatened, maybe tried before, but who've moved past the point of being believed which is exactly how they "succeed" in jumping off the bridge. On the other hand, nothing is at all entertaining as watching people die on film. It really emphasizes--for me--how very pathetic Hollywood or any fictional movie death has ever been. It's upsetting as all get out, but so necessary to see.
Why the Golden Gate? Is the question of the film, since they can't answer for the individuals, even with the words of relatives and loved ones to give clues. I think the friend of the suicide you follow throughout the film (and who "completes" at the end for a climax in a way that is not anything like as cheap as that sounds, I promise) said it best: "There's a kind of false romance about the bridge."
I think she's exactly right. The bright color of the Golden Gate stands out against the pasty colors of the low houses and wet-and-dry scrubland of San Francisco over which it towers. The architecture is old enough to be exotic, but familiar enough not to be mustily historical. It has the promise of when it was built, of a future only on the up, up, up. Rising out of the mist, it's familiar, friendly sight at the same time that it's an imposing, domineering giant. Jumping off it, you hope to marr its perfection but also to merge with it, I imagine. The grandeur of such a gesture does translate to the non-suicidal.
I have walked across that bridge at least three or four times in my life, and it never gets old. It's just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I always feel like laughing on that bridge, which might explain my inappropriate reaction to the first suicide I saw off of it in the movie. It really does sweep you up.
I highly recommend The Bridge, by the by. It's not wall-to-wall depressing as it might seem. The most brilliant thing in the world is watching a photographer struggle with the same incredulous reaction as you, the viewer, as he photographs a girl out on the ledge and moves past the lethargy, the inherent, "Surely not!" reaction we all have to being confronted with someone who wants to die when we, ourselves, are in the prime of our lives, to reach out and pull her back. Bawled like mad at that.
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Date: 2007-08-01 11:01 pm (UTC)