Purely by chance I just watched, yesterday, two amazing, worth-watching movies, both dark but gripping nevertheless.
I'll start with the documentary, BRIDGE. This one has, to be candid, really taken me aback. The subject is suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, you know the one Drake could have seen as he sailed by hundreds of years ago. (S.F. doesn't have a Drake Hotel for nothing.) Yes, the camera lingered on the Bridge over so long a period it actually catches people repeatedly returning to the Bridge and finally jumping off. The most flamboyant is a fairly young male with long black hair and wearing all black clothes. Twice he climbed over the waist high steel railing but didn't actually jump until the second time. He had a rehearsal in other words. On the way down he did a sort of swan dive and landed horizontal ensuring, knowingly or not knowingly, instant death. At 120 miles per hour it'd be like hitting concrete. Another jumper landed feet first and survived. He is given a long interview in which he is most candid and engaging. I think it was unusually generous of him to submit so graciously. Glad to be alive I suppose.
Relatives and friends of the dead also give interviews. The documentary must have been a labor of love. There is nothing prurient or irreverant intended in the documentary, nor is any intended in this heads up recommendation: to watch, not to jump! Ha!
Actually I'd read some years ago an article in the New Yorker about suicides from that Bridge. And recently I read in the paper that jumping may be made much more difficult, if not impossible, by adding fencing.
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I've searched my conscience for evidence that when I hitch-hiked to Wyoming and back on a weekend by beginning after I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, did I have suicide in mind? No memory of entertaining suicide can be discovered. But, I was perhaps in desperate need of a change of scenery. I left out earlier, in an Entry, that in Wyoming I knocked on the door of a brothel, very late at night. I had to walk up some wooden stairs. Quickly, immediately after knocking, I went back down the wooden stairs as quietly as possible. I was only seventeen. Somehow, though, I knew what the naked light bulb at the head of the stairs, near the door, meant.
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A movie with a strangely similar ambience opened and vanished last March (2007) so fast I missed any and all mention of the film. It's called Reign Over Me, starring Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle (the latter the Black head of detectives in CRASH.) When it came out critics turned sour apparently because of a plot detail than seems to have been ommitted from the DVD which I've seen now four times beginning yesterday. Adam Sandler plays a dentist off his head from the death of his wife and three very young children in a plane crash. From the DVD I got that they were killed in a routine plane trip from NY to Boston to see relatives. But when released there was a line saying that the plane crashed on 9/11, out of Boston I assume. That one line seems to have ruined the movie's chances of being taken seriously. For the story it matters nothing where the plane was going. Planes crash, and almost never from terrorists. It's billion to one chance even today.
The movie was written and directed by Mike Binder. Produced by Jack Binder. One of the roles is played by a 'Binder.'
Critics jumped on trivia such as New York law prohibits engine driven scooters, a vehicle excentrically ridden at all hours by the deeply disturbed, shattered, Adam Sandler character whom kind dentist played by ever-skillful Don Cheadle at the heights of his powers tries to assist.
Movies about kindness grip me. Reminds me of the line spoken by Blanche: "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers." (Sure hope I have that word perfect.) Cheadle puts up with a man 'drowning' who apparently wants to drown. Swimmers know that rescuing someone in the water can be treacherous because the drowning person in panic is likely to drown you too!
Two fascinating women's roles are played, says the critics, by otherwise "supermodels." I didn't object to their credits good or bad, I just got a bit confused by the fact they looked almost the same. Their roles help establish how far gone Adam Sandler's character really is; all blandishments leave him cold.
The critics were right about one thing: New York City sure is made to look good, night or day. But, trust me, NYC for very young people; older people are happier elsewhere. IMO.
Barry
