I just finished watching one of the most captivating yet disturbing documentaries I’ve ever seen. Called simply The Bridge, the film was the work of Eric Steel and distributed by the IFC in 2006. It centers around the famous Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco where the highest number of suicides occur every year within the United States.
The film’s content is highly disturbing because it shows actual video of suicide jumpers jumping off the bridge and into the water below. When I first started watching the film, I hadn’t read up on the making of it and did not know that the filmmaker actually placed cameras at strategic jumping spots on the bridge in order to get footage of people’s suicides. I can’t imagine filming something like that over the course of an entire year and coming away with over 20 suicides and then having to interview family and friends about it afterward.
As I said, the film is oddly mesmerizing mainly because of this footage and the fact that this bridge has become known over the years as the place so many people choose to end their lives.
