The Bridge (2006)

[A Boy Named Seo]

IMDB.

There was a thread about this movie a while back. A link to an article or something in the NBF, but I couldn't find it. Watched it today. Fuck, man. Heavy movie.

I thought it was probably what it set out to be. A documentary that tells the story of people with depression or mental illness who want to kill themselves by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. The movie pieces together those stories by talking to friends and loved ones of the people who jumped, and we learn about help they did or didn't get, signs they did or didn't give, and how those left behind are affected.

Thing is, is to tell these stories, the filmmaker manned a camera from across the water pointing at the bridge, watched people walk up and find a place to hurtle themselves from, and taped them "Faces of Death"-style climbing over the rail and throwing themselves to their deaths.

Some of the people I imagine nothing could've been done. Some of them, though, are clearly contemplating and he knows it, otherwise he wouldn't be making this movie and filming those particular people. Some of them stood looking over the same spot for way long enough to call the Bridge Patrol or somebody or something, but he didn't and that kinda grossed me out.

That said, the movie, I guess, accomplished its goals. It's hard as hell to watch, though.