"The Bridge"
Fascinated at the thought that something so brutal and distgusting could only be Rated R, I would have thought NC-17 would have barely sufficed. Maybe because it’s the innocence in someone’s shape as they leap and how their body language describes their surety, or their hesitation. Maybe because it’s 4200 feet all the way down from a beautiful bridge we admire, or maybe it’s because we’ve all despaired and thought of such things, but never took it to the next level. That’s their moment and we’re exploiting the fact that they’re over it, and this place. I would say that someone could easily be reaching out by doing it in such a public space but the access to a place so high, so magnetic, and that landing in water just seems more pleasant than rocks at the bottom of a cliff or pavement at the bottom of a building, I suppose it makes more sense. The walk that these people take is like that of the plank on a ship where the crew wants their passenger to swim with the fishes. None of them are racing out to the middle of the bridge and just hurdling the shoulder-high fence to get it over with. They pace themselves, they wonder about what this life has brought them and why. One woman gets arrested three times as she stands so long at the precipice. It doesn’t help her cause that she wears the same style hat each time but in different colors because someone definitely calls the cops each time she’s there (we are left to wonder if it’s the cameraman the last two times). The main character in this work of panoramic discovery is Gene. He’s the exact person you think would jump off a bridge if you were walking by him that day. Long ratty black hair that whips around in the wind so uncontrollably that it slaps him silly. He has a tight leather black jacket and a defeated rocker look about him. His friends all say he talked about killing himself when you would ask a simple question like “what would you like for breakfast?” “To die” would be a typical answer. Gene is interesting because he’s tall, and his pale skin against his all black heavy metal guitarist ensemble looks angelic, or gothic. If the dialogue didn’t constantly lead up to his death, we might’ve thought he could walk away, but we did not want him too. By the end of this movie all you want to do is see people jump. I found myself concentrating so hard to see splashes in the water when they would show us the time lapse photography, and was let down when I didn’t see one. There’s something about seeing death and the disbelief that you’re watching it happen. It’s an experience unlike typical movies and TV, which are make believe and therefore it’s easy to shrug it off when someone gets killed, no matter how gory. Oddly enough, after the second jumper, it was easy to watch. Their trajectory, if they lept at the highest point, if they stepped over the ledge onto another ledge to await their decision, you start taking little notes to guess how serious they really were and you get a bit angry when they don’t do it, or are saved by a passerby. Yes, your heart races when you see them put their little hand onto that massive cable wire to lift themselves up onto the ledge. Their insignificance in size, space and time just drifts with the whipping clouds passing below them and the bridge. Since you as the viewer already know that what you’re watching is in the past, you’re willing to let happen what is completely out of your control, and that’s whether they live, or die. It’s probably the purest documentary out there because there’s no acting, no person signing a waiver letting a cameraman in their house to film what is absolutely the most intimate moment. You might think it’s also the most selfish documentary ever made, for the exposure of tainted minds and characters that could have somehow been helped and pulled back. I, however, do not agree with that sentiment. All these people wanted was to be noticed. To stand as high in front of the world as they could, screaming fuck you to the city that surrounded them and the sea below. Picking daylight as their perfect time to leap when we all know that the night is the worst and most feared for its loneliness. Because of their displays they are now known and remembered by me, and the thousands of others who have seen this. In light of popular yet sick ways to make a statement these days, they could have self-immolated in some tiny city in the hopes of spurning an Arab Spring. Would they have had any more purpose, or gusto then a guy pouring gasoline on himself?
Gene is the last in The Bridge to go, and that’s because he had the most dramatic fall and the best film footage from takeoff to landing. Instead of ruining with words what really is something terrifyingly quick but undeniably unforgettable, please take a look for yourself. And if not, there’ll be around 25 more people that will do it this year, and the next, and the year after that…after all, we’re a growing population. As sick as it sounds, I don’t look forward to a follow-up of The Bridge, but if there is one that comes out, I am bound to watch it.
Showing posts with label Documentary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Documentary. Show all posts
Friday, November 11, 2011
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Dolce and Gabbana Shoes or a Doctor of Philosophy
To unravel philosophy is impossible. Opinions encompass its entirety, and no facts can be taken from an airborne train of thought. Using brief fragments from one apology and then attaching our own vague generality to the end, is no more innovative then adding salt to a recipe.
I failed Intro to Philosophy, so I’m no Hobbes. Well, I shouldn’t say I failed. Studying what I thought would be the answers rather than giving my own, forced me to an “F” before I withdrew. These days though, I understand what’s expected when engaged in similar discussion. Poop in my hand, throw shit out there and see what sticks. Then, I was 18. Philosophy was a joke. Any answer you gave earned a brutal verbal beat-down…..because you should have known, there are no right answers.
In the documentary “Examined Life,” interviews with people whom I assume are profound intellects on human thought, were dumbed down to relate common philosophies with everyday streetwalking. Although it’s difficult to transform these planetary blowhards (who would likely trade one of their testicles for a signed Star Trek DVD) into a calm-talking Dr. Drew, subtly soothing the bubbly herpes outbreak of any club-grinding alpha-male, some truly relevant comparisons actually did rise to the surface.
Each individual seems to be asked the same questions, ultimately ending with “are we supposed to search for meaning in life?” Excellent, and each equally different, points of view arose such as experiencing as much as possible especially when those events lead to nowhere. At one point, two dogs playing tag could not be translated into anything but enjoying themselves; and I applauded such restraint.
One of the philosopher's revived an analogy he'd used 30 years prior when referencing the material things we purchase. A woman sees Dolce and Gabbana shoes in Bergdorf Goodman’s, and buys them for $1,000. He then puts her in a situation with the shoes on, “you’re walking by a knee-deep pond and you see a small child drowning, but no one’s around to help. No time to take off the shoes…what would you do?” As every woman normally proceeds “I’d save little Stewie Griffin, even though he’s always trying to kill his mother, and completely ruin my new pumps”…….he responds, “if you’re willing to destroy those shoes to save 1 kid’s life, you could save more than 20 by donating that $1,000 to Oxfam.” The lesson learned is that being a moral/ethical person is not chucking a balled up dollar at a homeless man and smiling because it’s now up to them how they use it. It’s what you could’ve done beyond the dollar; how much further you could’ve gone to better everyone and why you didn’t. Sitting eating my Goobers, sipping a mammoth Diet Coke and lounging with my feet on the chair in front of me, I began to feel real shitty about what I've spent my money on.
The next best thought provoking monologue came from a guy who looked like he’d dressed himself in tin cans, rotting banana peels and the pubic hair of a bison. Befittingly, his narrative revolved around the Department of Sanitation and our unconscious effort to block the whereabouts of our shit. To be taken as literally as possible, it disappears from our mind the minute it’s down the pipes (or in the garbage as they hovered around him at the local dump). To instead, learn about the amount of waste each of us commits a year to this earth and then work on adjusting it……even a subtle change by everyone would have an astronomically positive effect. However since he doesn’t suspect we will, we should then embrace our trash as an equivalent part of this world before it finally gets fed up with us. Upon its ultimate unhappiness, the world will again revert to catastrophe beyond our Hollywood imaginations, and place us all where our dinosaurs currently live….our gas tanks.
As aggressive as these dames and gents may seem, it’s no different than the drunken debates between you and your buddies about politics and religion. No one’s right and everyone disagrees regardless. None of them deserve to point the finger anywhere but at themselves for the amount of time they’ve squandered reading books about philosophy instead of guiding small burrowing worms out of young Namibian children’s feet. They could’ve nailed miles of boards and sheetrock up at the nearest Habitat for Humanity or dunked thousands of ladles into vats of chicken broth at downtown soup kitchens instead of listening to hundreds of hours of babbling lectures on their society’s disenchantment of reality. Forget about the lady and her D&G shoes, let’s turn the tables and put these hypocrite high-browed know-it-all’s knee deep in their own twisted analogies.
You have $175,000 in your hand and you’re walking a path that forks. One way leads down a little dirt path where there’s 6 villages on the verge of starvation, 4,000 people altogether. The other, solid cement and lit by halogens straight towards a marble building. Above the door there's a sign “Come on in, be a Doctor of Philosophy.”
Try and tell me now, why there’s no right answer to the question. Try and tell me now, how much further you could have gone to better everyone, and why you didn’t.
I failed Intro to Philosophy, so I’m no Hobbes. Well, I shouldn’t say I failed. Studying what I thought would be the answers rather than giving my own, forced me to an “F” before I withdrew. These days though, I understand what’s expected when engaged in similar discussion. Poop in my hand, throw shit out there and see what sticks. Then, I was 18. Philosophy was a joke. Any answer you gave earned a brutal verbal beat-down…..because you should have known, there are no right answers.
In the documentary “Examined Life,” interviews with people whom I assume are profound intellects on human thought, were dumbed down to relate common philosophies with everyday streetwalking. Although it’s difficult to transform these planetary blowhards (who would likely trade one of their testicles for a signed Star Trek DVD) into a calm-talking Dr. Drew, subtly soothing the bubbly herpes outbreak of any club-grinding alpha-male, some truly relevant comparisons actually did rise to the surface.
Each individual seems to be asked the same questions, ultimately ending with “are we supposed to search for meaning in life?” Excellent, and each equally different, points of view arose such as experiencing as much as possible especially when those events lead to nowhere. At one point, two dogs playing tag could not be translated into anything but enjoying themselves; and I applauded such restraint.
One of the philosopher's revived an analogy he'd used 30 years prior when referencing the material things we purchase. A woman sees Dolce and Gabbana shoes in Bergdorf Goodman’s, and buys them for $1,000. He then puts her in a situation with the shoes on, “you’re walking by a knee-deep pond and you see a small child drowning, but no one’s around to help. No time to take off the shoes…what would you do?” As every woman normally proceeds “I’d save little Stewie Griffin, even though he’s always trying to kill his mother, and completely ruin my new pumps”…….he responds, “if you’re willing to destroy those shoes to save 1 kid’s life, you could save more than 20 by donating that $1,000 to Oxfam.” The lesson learned is that being a moral/ethical person is not chucking a balled up dollar at a homeless man and smiling because it’s now up to them how they use it. It’s what you could’ve done beyond the dollar; how much further you could’ve gone to better everyone and why you didn’t. Sitting eating my Goobers, sipping a mammoth Diet Coke and lounging with my feet on the chair in front of me, I began to feel real shitty about what I've spent my money on.
The next best thought provoking monologue came from a guy who looked like he’d dressed himself in tin cans, rotting banana peels and the pubic hair of a bison. Befittingly, his narrative revolved around the Department of Sanitation and our unconscious effort to block the whereabouts of our shit. To be taken as literally as possible, it disappears from our mind the minute it’s down the pipes (or in the garbage as they hovered around him at the local dump). To instead, learn about the amount of waste each of us commits a year to this earth and then work on adjusting it……even a subtle change by everyone would have an astronomically positive effect. However since he doesn’t suspect we will, we should then embrace our trash as an equivalent part of this world before it finally gets fed up with us. Upon its ultimate unhappiness, the world will again revert to catastrophe beyond our Hollywood imaginations, and place us all where our dinosaurs currently live….our gas tanks.
As aggressive as these dames and gents may seem, it’s no different than the drunken debates between you and your buddies about politics and religion. No one’s right and everyone disagrees regardless. None of them deserve to point the finger anywhere but at themselves for the amount of time they’ve squandered reading books about philosophy instead of guiding small burrowing worms out of young Namibian children’s feet. They could’ve nailed miles of boards and sheetrock up at the nearest Habitat for Humanity or dunked thousands of ladles into vats of chicken broth at downtown soup kitchens instead of listening to hundreds of hours of babbling lectures on their society’s disenchantment of reality. Forget about the lady and her D&G shoes, let’s turn the tables and put these hypocrite high-browed know-it-all’s knee deep in their own twisted analogies.
You have $175,000 in your hand and you’re walking a path that forks. One way leads down a little dirt path where there’s 6 villages on the verge of starvation, 4,000 people altogether. The other, solid cement and lit by halogens straight towards a marble building. Above the door there's a sign “Come on in, be a Doctor of Philosophy.”
Try and tell me now, why there’s no right answer to the question. Try and tell me now, how much further you could have gone to better everyone, and why you didn’t.
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