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The Bridge

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by Rosie Saunders
An iconic American landmark, a monument to engineering and a leading tourist attraction, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge is the subject of The Bridge, a challenging documentary that examines why more people choose to end their lives here than anywhere else in the world. Since 1937, when the bridge opened, more than 1,300 people have jumped to their deaths from the bridge’s walkway making it the world’s leading suicide location.

Debut director Eric Steele and his crew spent all of 2004 exploring this phenomenon. They set up cameras at either end of the Golden Gate and filmed people crossing the bridge on foot from San Francisco to Marin County for almost every daylight minute for the whole of the year. They filmed everyone from tourists to bicyclists, as well as those who work on and beneath the bridge. The cameras captured 23 of the 24 suicides that year as well as many unrealised attempts.

The narrative foundation of the film, however, lies in the frank and personal interviews with the families, friends, witnesses and one man, who, incredibly, survived his suicide attempt, as they talk about their association with the bridge and the people who've thrown themselves from it. Following a handful of these stories in detail and others more briefly the film encourages an open and honest consideration of issues such as depression and substance abuse that lead people to commit suicide. The raw footage of the bridge is woven with these interviews to create an engaging documentary about suicide that deftly links this famous landmark with deeply personal stories, wider issues of mental health and crucially highlights the visible and public nature of acts of suicide.
A static camera films the length of the Golden Gate Bridge on a gloomy afternoon. A solitary splash to the right-hand side of the screen signals the death of another bridge jumper. Shots similar to this punctuate the film, they are unsettling whilst strangely alluring and leave one scouring the bay area landscape for signs of a potential jumper. What does this say about the on-screen version of the last moments of those who have chosen to end their lives on the bridge? One thing we may take from it is that the act of suicide, like the famous viewpoint chosen by these jumpers, is spectacular, public and highly visible. Thus the film raises further questions of civic responsibility as well as stressing the complexities of the relationship of filmmaker to this highly problematic material.
Despite the fact that the film tirelessly returns to images of the iconic Golden Gate it is difficult to get bored of the new angles and ever-changing weather that envelopes the bridge and the bay. Steel is clearly someone who has invested much time in exploring the area and has been able to conjure up a sense of the bridge’s ‘fatal grandeur’ that Tad Friend writes of in his article ‘Jumpers’ that inspired the film.

Dir Eric Steel, USA 2005, 93 mins

The Bridge screens as part of the Times BFI 50th London Film Festival at the ICA on Monday 23rd October at 21:00 and NFT1 on Wednesday 25th October at 16:15.

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