<< Back to section 4

Closing Thoughts on The Bridge:

The Bridge brings up issues of sensationalism, consumerism and aesthetics. Making an artistic product in contemporary North America relies, to a certain extent, on making something novel; that's just part of what being in a consumer driven society entails. Yet the question becomes: at what point does something become so innovative that its newness becomes a detriment to viewing and understanding? If what is so innovative about a film relegates it to a brief blip on the cultural screen of derision, and a lighting rod for political anger, what is actually accomplished?

It seems that Steel wants The Bridge to serve as a catalyst for dialogue about suicide and mental illness, about what one expects, suspects, and understands when it comes to the question of "suicide." The problem with The Bridge is that in being so novelly controversial--- through its political debut, filmatic and ethical tactics--- people have been driven away from seeing it. Audiences have, perhaps understandably, shied from seeing a film dubbed a snuff flick or suicide porn. Unfortunately, such characterizations stifle debate before it has the chance to begin, and that limits awareness and serves no one.

For Steel, as he repeated in the interview, it seems to be a matter of "bearing witness." In the end, it seems as though it's the act of bearing witness that makes The Bridge most palatable. Still, what does it say about our society that we need to see these things to know that they exist? What does it mean that it was an image from Tad Fiend's article of a man walking, of moving from one point to another, that needed to be come more and more visible, over and over again? If the subject of the film is sad, it is made more so by the fact that it takes a film like this to engender a sense of awareness and a larger public debate.