Surely the point of any documentary of merit is to reveal the hidden or disguised truth behind it's subject. The question this film poses on false advertising is why so many suicides seek out The Golden Gate Bridge for their final demise. We certainly see the suicides. We live through the film with a succession of suicide jumpers, filmed either full on or subverted from the grandeur of the bridge to what looks like a pin dropping with a quiet splash. A number of friends, relatives participate in disclosing the sad, usually mentally ill backgrounds of the dead. There is one young guy who is 24 featured. He survived the jump, one of very, very few ever to have done so. From the moment he left those famous red rails he wanted to survive, he said. He managed to turn his body and enter feet first, 250ft drop, 5 secs, 120mph, he's underwater and he's thinking ' Am I still alive?' As he rose frantically to the surface and got his first breath of air he felt what he thought was a shark at his feet. 'I've survived the bridge and now I'm going to be eaten by a shark!'he remembers. There was a nervous laugh in the auditorium at that.' I later found out it was seal. It was swimming round me in small circles and only that was keeping me afloat. No-one till the day I die can tell me that was not God.' This kid is the sort of guy you just want to wrap your arms around and show him what the world has to offer. A good guy, handsome, smart and humorous. He is battling schizophrenia and said at the end of his interview, worryingly: I just want to be normal again. But I know I never will be.'There was the sad interview with the parents of a young man who never came back,' sometimes I feel like doing it myself ' the father says.' I wasn't a bad mother, maybe I wasn't as good as I could've been, but I wasn't bad ' says the mother he loved, in tears. From the start of the film to the close, one guy called Gene is featured. Why? His story was hard to empathize with in that he was forever telling everyone he was going to end it. If you've ever been on the receiving end of that, frankly, as his friends say, it gets boring after a while. But he made good footage, from the opening shots; tall, slim, clad in black leather, long black hair with black sunglasses, 35 yrs old,standing looking out over the rails at the water, making final phone calls, pacing restively, the camera actually following his feet as he walks his final steps through the rails. He looks like he craves the dramatic end, then you remember he didn't know it was being filmed. Much less for his suicide to be filmed. He climbs on the rail. He sits with his back to the water. He always dragged things out, we are told. The film ends with him standing bolt upright on the rail. Unlike the other jumpers, who all faced out to the water, he simply steps back and the camera tracks his upright, unwavering fall into a watery grave all the time facing the bridge.
There was silence in the dark auditorium at the end. I left looking at the intensity on some of the faces still sat in their seats and having known a few suicides myself I had a very uneasy feeling.
It's kind of ruined the beauty of the bridge as I found it when I crossed it both ways by foot in '89. I kept thinking I walked right past the spot where this and that guy jumped and that over 300 men and women had jumped since. The director never broadcast his intent for fear that it would encourage jumpers and when they saw what they thought was a potential suicide they alerted the emergency services, so lives were saved. But lots of people lean over the bridge, sit on the rail, laughing, joking, throwing their arms around each other, it's impossible to tell what's going to happen in most cases, something the film makes play on. It's not really a film I'd recommend to anyone to be honest, even if the cinematography is excellent, which it is. It even feels wrong saying that. Ultimately,it doesn't answer the question it poses. It leaves bad images, tarnishes good ones. The question this film poses is why suicides seek out national landmarks, specifically The Golden Gate Bridge, the most favoured suicide spot in the world to end their life. The families interviewed weren't told their loved ones had been captured jumping on film, indeed neither were the authorities, who were told it was a film on 'nature'. The lack of openness with the families smells all wrong. There is, of course, the final and ultimate slight, which is to have filmed the suicides without their permission, having set up their cameras with the expressed purpose of doing so. Like they cared, having gone off a world-famous landmark? Of course they wanted to be noticed, doing it in such a public place? Maybe if the researchers had done their stuff a little more thoroughly they might have discovered why the suicides chose the bridge and what it was about. This film was a gifthorse to the film-maker and has the deep potential to throw up disturbing images to the vulnerable.
There was silence in the dark auditorium at the end. I left looking at the intensity on some of the faces still sat in their seats and having known a few suicides myself I had a very uneasy feeling.
It's kind of ruined the beauty of the bridge as I found it when I crossed it both ways by foot in '89. I kept thinking I walked right past the spot where this and that guy jumped and that over 300 men and women had jumped since. The director never broadcast his intent for fear that it would encourage jumpers and when they saw what they thought was a potential suicide they alerted the emergency services, so lives were saved. But lots of people lean over the bridge, sit on the rail, laughing, joking, throwing their arms around each other, it's impossible to tell what's going to happen in most cases, something the film makes play on. It's not really a film I'd recommend to anyone to be honest, even if the cinematography is excellent, which it is. It even feels wrong saying that. Ultimately,it doesn't answer the question it poses. It leaves bad images, tarnishes good ones. The question this film poses is why suicides seek out national landmarks, specifically The Golden Gate Bridge, the most favoured suicide spot in the world to end their life. The families interviewed weren't told their loved ones had been captured jumping on film, indeed neither were the authorities, who were told it was a film on 'nature'. The lack of openness with the families smells all wrong. There is, of course, the final and ultimate slight, which is to have filmed the suicides without their permission, having set up their cameras with the expressed purpose of doing so. Like they cared, having gone off a world-famous landmark? Of course they wanted to be noticed, doing it in such a public place? Maybe if the researchers had done their stuff a little more thoroughly they might have discovered why the suicides chose the bridge and what it was about. This film was a gifthorse to the film-maker and has the deep potential to throw up disturbing images to the vulnerable.