IFC's Documentary The Bridge Opens Today
Three and a half minutes in, a middle-aged, slightly overweight man leans casually against the pedestrian barrier of the Golden Gate Bridge and, without hesitation, climbs over the boundary. And then he leaps.
Only after the zoom lens has captured his face-first plummet and recorded the powerful splash as body collides against water do the opening credits roll, and only after that does the viewer fully appreciate that what they've just witnessed on screen wasn't scripted.
Inspired by a New Yorker magazine article published in late 2003, The Bridge tells the stories of various unrelated individuals who jumped to their deaths off San Francisco's historic landmark in 2004. The documentary cuts between sweeping panoramic footage of the Golden Gate Bridge and close-up, candid—often unnecessarily so—interviews with family members and friends of the deceased. Regrettably, it never attempts to explain why people choose this particular venue to end their lives, nor does it delve much into the history or allure of the bridge itself. Meanwhile, some critics have lambasted the documentary as exploitative—the Chicago Tribune went so far as to dismiss it as a "particularly scenic snuff film." We're not sure about that; death here is presented as, at most, a crude abstraction, reduced to grainy footage of obscure figures splashing into the bay.
What's more unnerving is that the filmmakers (Eric Steele makes his directorial debut in this well-produced IFC project) spent months methodically waiting, observing, and filming, sifting through thousands of tourists and locals to find appropriate subjects. The entire film was essentially pieced together backwards, with the filmed suicides serving as cornerstones from which a proper narrative could be crafted.
Not surprisingly, the cinematography of The Bridge is majestic, at times almost breathtaking, and while the film may not offer the audience much in the way of insight, it's still an impressive, if macabre, piece of documentary work.
The Bridge opens today at the Alamo South Lamar.
