Recently, my wife and I discovered another library to which we have access within 15 minutes of our home. One of the greatest advantages of libraries is the opportunity to check out movies for free, especially if the library has a decent collection. The local library that we had been frequenting has a fairly mundane collection, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing very current either. At the suggestion of a co-worker, we sought out this other library and found that they even loan out blu-rays.
Among the movies that I will most check out from libraries are documentaries. For whatever reason, I have a harder time renting them, but when they are free, I will usually eat them up. At my most recent trip to the library, this was no exception. Something caught my eye as I browsed the titles as I fell upon the movie "The Bridge." As I read the synopsis of the movie, I was very intrigued. In 2004, A producer and his film crew spent a year filming the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. They captured footage of a number of suicides and even a few near misses. The movie intrigued me enough to cause me to check it out.
Just as in other films that are not necessarily about real life, the soundtrack is fairly important in documentaries. Music has a way of emotionally connecting people and the score for "The Bridge" subtly drew me in. It wasn't like I was humming the tunes afterwards, but the soundtrack set the mood and tone for a film that had the potential of coming across as excessively voyeuristic.
The film tracked the stories of a number of people, mostly through friends and family. They interviewed those closest to these people to hear about their stories, to get a better understanding of what might have been going on in their lives at the time when they decided that life was no longer worth living. All of them who were highlighted were unmarried. Some had some kind of mental illness. Many had experienced excessive loneliness.
Among the stories, there were three that stood out to me. One was the story of a nameless woman. As she was getting ready to throw herself off of the bridge, a fireman from Pittsburgh who had come to San Francisco and who was taking pictures, noticed her. As he described the scene, he compared it to a photographer from National Geographic as a ferocious animal approaches, the photographer is captured in the moment, almost frozen and unable to move, yet they know that for the sake of their own life, they are going to need to go to safety. He said that he needed to remind him of the gravity of the situation that he was observing, reached over the railing, and grabbed the young woman by the backpack. The police eventually came and took her away, but as he was making his way back to his car, he saw her being put in the back of a bridge patrol cruiser. They made eye contact and he said that it freaked him out. He wondered what she might have been thinking about him, the man who had prevented her from following through.
Another story was of a young man who had battled with bi-polar disorder. After assuring his father that he would not commit suicide, he made his way to the bridge. As he contemplated what he was about to do, tears streaming down his face, a woman asked him to photograph her. In his mind he thought, "I'm about to kill myself, really?" When he finally moved himself over the railing, to the ledge, and jumped, he describes his thoughts as he fell. He realized what he was doing and managed to right himself enough so that when he landed, he landed on his feet. Somehow, he survived the fall. The young man says that he only survived by the grace of God and his life has been changed. He works to prevent others who are struggling with suicide from following through with it.
The final story that stuck with me was about a young man named Gene. To the biased outsider, he may have seemed like a perfect candidate, someone to watch. The testimonies of friends describe a personality that was somewhat other worldly. He never quite fit in, though he had a number of close friends. Success, or at least his definition of it, always seemed to be out of reach, just beyond his grasp. Ironically, on the morning of his suicide, he had a message at the place where he was staying from a place that was offering him a job doing what he had wanted to do. Sadly, he never took the opportunity.
The story of Gene acted as a thread throughout the whole film. I gather that it was done this way because the footage of him and his suicide were among the most graphic of the film. The cameras captured him from his ascent onto the railing, through his fall, and all the way to his impact with the water. It's a hard scene to watch. In fact, the whole movie is somewhat difficult to watch.
Like most teenagers struggling to fit in, there was probably a time in my teenage years that I had contemplated suicide, but never strongly. The thought simply passed through my mind without being entertained. At the same time, during my sophomore year, I lost a friend to suicide. The aftermath of such a brutal event is always intriguing to me, as family and friends cope and make every attempt and effort to understand exactly why this person whom they had loved decided to take their own life. "What could we have done?" always seems to be the question that hauntingly echoes through the minds of loved ones.
As I watched this film, I kept asking myself, "How does one get here?" What brings a person to such a level that they think that death is the only solution? Many in the film talk about the courage that it takes for someone to actually go through with it, but I wonder exactly what kind of courage it is that results in follow through. Is it courage or complete apathy? Have these people reached the place where they are so numb from their circumstances that even the thought of "The End" doesn't phase them?
The extras on the DVD show interviews of some of those who filmed the footage. They talk about the impact that seeing people end their life had on them. The images that they witnessed are forever burned on their minds, never to be cleansed. The premise behind the film had been shrouded in secrecy by the filmmaker as he sought out people willing to take part in his project.
Some other online reviews raise the question of the ethics of this film. Is it a snuff film? Would it have been as meaningful and have made as deep of an impact had the chilling footage not been captured? The "how" question of these deaths is fully displayed but there is no substantial answer given to the "why" question.
From my own personal vantage point, it's hard to watch the film and not want to reach out and grab these people, to tell them that it's okay, to show them that they are valued, regardless of what others have told them through word or actions. In a society that moves so quickly that people rarely have time for deeper relationships, it might seem as though that is the main cause of these decisions. Yet there are countless testimonials from people who loved those who threw themselves off of the bridge. Of course, there are always stories behind the stories and what we see at first glance may not always be the truth. But I still wonder what the driving force was that drove these people to the literal edge.
"The Bridge" is not a film for those with weak stomachs and minds that don't easily erase disturbing images. It was worth my time to watch in order that I could be reminded of the fragility of life. We are broken and incomplete people in need of redemption, restoration, and relationships. If there is a way that I can make a difference in one person's life, I would be foolish not to do it. Life is worth living if we can find purpose there, it seems that most of these people never found it. If I can tell others about my story and let them know of the One in whom I find purpose, perhaps it could be the difference between life and death.
