Voyeurism at it’s Worst: Taking a Look at The Bridge

Climb.Jump.Repeat.

So goes the pattern in Eric Steel’s The Bridge, a documentary chronicling the suicides off of the Golden Gate Bridge in 2004. I had to watch this film for a class, and found myself both intrigued and disgusted by the actual footage of people jumping during that time frame.Setting up cameras in strategic locations around the bridge for the entirety of 2004, Steel captured a total of twenty-three suicides on film. Twenty-three people with histories,families, and friends. Steel reaches out to these contacts, going as far to interview them and provide the viewer with a portrait of various jumpers, then abruptly presenting the viewer with a concluding shot of the person jumping. This led me to ask,

is this meant to elicit an emotional response from the viewer for shock value, or is it a technique meant to encourage dialogue in what is one of our society’s greatest taboos: suicide?

Steel does an impeccable job of providing the viewers with a series of juxtapositions that reveal themselves in different points throughout the film. This is seen in Kevin Hines, a survivor of a suicide attempt off the bridge, as he relates his struggle with bipolarism and depression. It is striking that a man in the deepest throes of misery and feelings of worthlessness could take his experience and depend on it for identity and happiness.Hines is now a public speaker on depression, and this position is something he is almost ecstatic about. The before and after of his suicide seems night and day, and I think Steel intended for the viewer to feel dually happy and sorry for Hines.

In some ways Steel sets the viewer up to empathize with the jumpers- the environment and grandeur of the bridge is too romantic, too enticing. But with this particular man’s release of grip on the railing that kept him alive, the viewer is abruptly propelled into an emotional overdrive. It was disgusting to witness a man’s death- to feel that overwhelming desire of talking him out of it when there is no way you can. I felt like I was participating in the lowest form of voyeurism, and while it kept me paying attention to the film, I resented that Steel put me, the viewer, in that position. At least Hines was alive to allow the viewer into his life.

Whatever insights The Bridge provides for the viewer, the controversy it has sparked has garnered more publicity and characterized the film more than any other aspect. The controversy lies in the aforementioned footage of the jumpers’ suicides. While there were no known objections by family members of those dead of using this video, many viewers were outraged and left wondering where the line between sensitivity and exploitation was. I found Steel to be crossing over into shameless sensationalism at times; the way the film played out, the viewer became accustomed to scanning the faces of the people milling about on the bridge wondering who would be the next one to jump. While this might have added to Steel’s successful attempts to put realizations in the viewers’ minds, along the lines of suicide can be done by anyone, even those you wouldn’t expect, it came across more like a sick game. Will it be the guy drinking a beer near the edge? The bicyclist? Or the guy laughing while talking on his cellph-oh, he jumped. It is not as if you ever become desensitized to death in The Bridge; it’s that you are more of a frequent participator in the aforementioned mind game.

There was one instance that particularly stuck out to me. Rocker Gene Sprague was shown throughout the film, pacing back and forth in quiet contemplation across the Golden Gate.Interviews were conducted with family friends, and it built up some excitement in a grotesque way. Is this the scene where he jumps? I found it troubling that while Gene was obviously targeted by the cameras and observed for a while, Steel did not feel the need to interfere or call the authorities. Was he, like the people surrounding Gene on the bridge, so apathetic to the situation that they did not try to stop this man? The climax, when Gene finally jumps (I feel disgusted with myself by saying finally in such a manner, that this was so expected), is the worst point in the film. And I do not think that is what Steel wanted. Steel left Gene for the end because he believed Gene to be an immortalization of all the jumpers off the bridge; at one point in the midst of a depressing life, they are free.

It is this romanticism that Steel, ironically, tries to combat throughout the film. We hear survivor Hines relate the injuries he was succumbed to after being pulled to safety, and they are graphic and offer some insight into the gruesome reality that a fall like that is. After the conclusion of the film, I was a mixture of emotions. Angry, sad, and interested. With no answers about suicide from Steel himself, I can only conclude that he wanted us to be confronted with these stories and deal with these emotions to come to our own answer. Despite my objections to the shallow use of the suicide footage, I found this to be a powerful and provocative film that is haunting days after watching.

So what say you,readers? For those of you who have seen the film, what did you think of the film and did you find the suicide footage to be gratuitous or necessary for creating dialogue about suicide?