quasify

Speaking of San Francisco, I finally got around to watching The Bridge, an Eric Steel documentary about the suicidal people who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in 2004. Going in, I knew this was going to be depressing (it was) and not particularly edifying (it wasn’t) but I at least thought from the trailer that it would be more beautiful than it turned out to be. The whole thing is cut throughout with some of the most awkward, static, multi-person interviews with families and witnesses that just go on and on to no particular end, interrupting and contradicting each other, only demonstrating the vagueness of their memories and inability to say anything insightful about those who succeeded in killing themselves. If anyone ever shows up with a camera to interview you about some departed loved one, please for the love of all that’s decent try to be dynamic, engaging, fluent in the art of spoken English. Or be convincingly rustic and folksy, or over-the-top bombastic, whatever. Just not bored and disengaged.