Review: The Bridge (2006)

The Bridge
documentary
2006
93 minutes
Rated R

by Scott Mendelson

One of the great tragedies of losing your life in a major and famous
event, be it natural or manmade, is that your life instantly pales in
legacy; overshadowed for all time by the manner in which you died.
When someone dies of old age, publicly or privately, it is easier to
think of that person in regards to their quality of life and quality
of personality. However, for those unlucky enough to die publicly,
the stigma is forever. They will always be known in history primarily
as 'died in Columbine' or 'perished on Pan Am flight 103' or 'jumped
to their death off of the Golden Gate Bridge'. At least those in the
last example chose their end.

The Bridge is a relatively hopeless film, both in tone and content, as
well as construction and quality. It is, allegedly, a probing
documentary about the Golden Gate Bridge and its penchant for being
used as a suicide device. Apparently, it is the world's most popular
destination for suicide. The film states that in 2005, twenty-four
people leaped off the bridge to their demise. Of all the millions of
people worldwide who choose to end their own lives, the fact that
twenty-four souls chose the same spot is not exactly a revelation.

This film is not about the bridge and its history as a choice of
suicide. It does not feature statistics, experts, historians, or
anyone with any amount of exceptional knowledge. It is simply an
observation of several suicides and those that did or did not try to
help them, and the scars that the survivors now keep. The effect
eventually becomes one of monotony and annoyance, especially due to
the constant ignorance, in regards to depression on display.

Pretty much every person profiled was a sufferer of mental illness,
from garden-variety depression to paranoid schizophrenia. What
aggravates is that many of the stories basically involve surrender.
Surrender to illnesses for which there is quality treatment available,
surrender to misconceptions about various kinds of mental illness, and
surrender to doing less than what could be done and then decrying the
results.

One story involves parents who basically allow their young son to
commit suicide because they don't think they can stop him and want him
to choose his own path. We never even discover whether that child was
mentally ill and what steps were taken to help him in the first
place. One of the main threads involved a young musician who waited
till his mother died of cancer before ending his life. We learn much
about his friends, who tried their best to be his family. But the
film offers up ridiculous excuses (he was upset because he couldn't
find love) and absurd what-ifs (the day he died, he was about to be
approved for a job that he wanted), as if these simple events were
catalysts or preventions in waiting.

To be fair, it is not the disagreeable attitudes and actions of the
characters that makes this film so awkward, but rather that the film
really has no focus. The film is not about the bridge, it's not about
suicide per se, and it's certainly not about mental illness in any
real or accurate way. It is, basically, ninety minutes of survivors
discussing their grief over their loved-ones' untimely ends. Yet the
overreaching theme seems to be that many of them really did not do
much to prevent said tragedies, yet now are upset that their friends
dared to end their own lives. Many of my friends suffer from varying
degrees of depression and there is plenty of quality treatment
available to render their conditions almost invisible.

Yet, time after time we see someone bemoaning how his or her friend
couldn't just shake it off or get over it. Yes, it is the
responsibility of the actual suicides in relation to their actions,
but the 'it's all in their heads' attitude about mental illness that
most of the interview subjects seem to share says a lot both about
them and, perhaps, about the filmmakers.

In the end, The Bridge is a portrait of grief, but without any real
reason to hear these stories. Their lives were not defined by the
bridge that they lept from, nor even from their final actions. It
would seem that their lives were defined by the ignorance of those
around them, in regards to the mental illnesses that eventually killed
them. In many ways, the film is just as ignorant.

Grade: C-