We watched the movie on DVD recently, and that was the reaction we had during more than one scene. We also shed a few tears. The movie isn't for the faint of heart, but it's not a snuff film either; there isn't as much footage of jumpers as one would fear (or hope for, depending on how you feel about these things), so what images are shown are shocking every time. Instead, the majority of the movie is focused on interviews with the families and friends of some of the people who chose to end their lives at the Golden Gate Bridge in 2004 (as well as an interview with a young man who survived a jump a few years earlier). Understanding why people choose to end their lives--and why they choose to do it on the Bridge--is the goal of the film, but those are questions that aren't really that hard to answer. Mental illness and/or severe depression play a factor in all the suicides discussed in the film and, well...the Golden Gate Bridge is a beautiful place to end it all. So, ultimately, the movie becomes an exercise in dread. Dreading the inevitable sight of these people jumping...and knowing someone else will probably do the very same thing some time this month.

Ironically, the issue of a suicide barrier, which was the topic of Tad Friend's New Yorker article "Jumpers," which was the inspiration for the documentary, isn't really mentioned in the film at all. And it's an issue that is, apparently, after 70 years of Bridge suicides, still being studied...