But viewers will come to this film for the scenes of jumpers. And because they're spliced into the bird-watching footage, the jumpers seem a part of the habitat—not so much exploited, but part of the reality of events here on the Golden Gate. The Bridge could've been a movie not so much about suicide despite its shots of suicide; it could've been the movie that filmmaker Steel told park officials he was filming: a sort of day-in-the-life project about the landmark. Because, as a documentarian, there's no denying that suicides are a part of the tale of the Golden Gate. Twenty-four people jumped to their deaths in 2004, the year he shot the film.
But Steel cuts back and forth from scenic shots of the bridge to plain shots of jumpers to long interviews with the family and friends of the jumpers. What emerges is an incomplete thesis on suicide. It's a slow meditation on emotional and mental pain set against the natural and engineering wonders of the bridge. Though the film has sparked controversy for messing with the accepted notion that we just don't talk about/write about/give media attention to/show footage of suicide, for fear that it will encourage or glorify killing oneself, The Bridge isn't exploitative. It's depressing. The collected comments of the family and friends bring to light behavioral patterns displayed by those who ended up killing themselves. Those comments also show the common misconceptions of why people commit suicide; it becomes apparent through the slow knitting of their tales that many of those who died had struggled with mental illnesses for some time, and for one reason or another, didn't get adequate treatment. Rarely was the act spontaneous; families told long stories about their suffering relatives' talk of suicide. More shocking than the footage of stepping off the bridge were the comments of some friends and family who had so tragically misunderstood the seriousness of the pain their loved ones were in.
Having said that, the film isn't any preachier than it is sensational. It's a film that captures the beauty of the bridge and the bay, and the agony of human nature—as best displayed in a tale told by the sole surviving jumper in the film: A good-looking twentysomething man who, struggling with his bipolar condition, was leaning against the bridge's rail, crying, preparing to jump, when a tourist stopped.
To ask him to take her picture. He complied. And then he jumped.