Jumping Off Bridges (2006) User Reviews

Sad, authentic and beautiful...

[belovedideas · 8/10 · 20 July 2006]

Kat Candler's "Jumping Off Bridges" is sad, genuine and beautiful.

Bryan Chafin's performance (as well as the rest of the wonderful cast's) were so convincing, it felt almost like a documentary rather than a feature film. The dialogue was realistic; not pop-cultur-y, not glib, not the typical teenage fare. Candler truly represents how teenagers talk. I know. I'm a college professor. I'm surrounded by them.

The color scheme was warm, easy to look at, lots of solid colors, oranges, blues, greens, some well placed burgundy, effectively moody.

The issues surrounding grief, guilt, depression and sadness are uneasy and beautifully rendered in her story and the actors' performances. Everyone is sorry. Mrs. Nelson apologizes for being the way she is. Zach is sorry for what happened to his sister. Frank Nelson is sorry for what his son had to endure. Eric is sorry for everything. The audience is sorry for all their pain, and WE FEEL as if we should have been able to help them, if only we just knew how.

I watched it twice so far and both times I watched it, I cried when Zach finally breaks down in front of his father. Frank is holding his sobbing son, apologizing, understanding his pain and my tears just flowed. "Thank you for understanding, thank you for understanding" I felt my heart cry over and over throughout that scene, as if I were the grieving son and a loving paternal figure was giving me permission and comfort and love.

The father, Frank Nelson breaks down in the school bathroom, a superb moment from Michael Emerson, didn't get to me as much as when Candler shows him standing alone at a faculty Halloween party. I was actually moaning this guttural, 'oh nooo, nooo, nooo' as I watched it. The isolation, the sadness, oh god, it was too much. Just when I thought my sorrow had swelled to its limit, he retreats, again, into the solitude of the bathroom. The audience knows. She didn't show it and she didn't have to. We know what he's about to do.

Good thing I keep tissues on my coffee table.

Another unforgettable scene shows Lindsay, Eric and Grove (I just love that name, Grove!) walk down the school corridor while everyone disperses and then eventually they do, too. The song lyrics were just perfect for that scene "I'd do anything for you...I did everything for you." Nice.

"Jumping Off Bridges" is an effective ode to the necessity of coping with grief, the impact of suicide, and the healing power of relationships.

A Gem of an Independent Film!

[Sylviastel · 8/10 · 5 May 2008]

I first thought it was a Canadian film. I had no idea until I read the credits that it was filmed entirely on location in Austin, Texas. This film is quite a gem and treasure about the relationships between a father and son, Frank and Zak Nelson, after the suicide death of the family matriarch. Zak blames himself as does Frank for her death. The father and son moments in the film are alone worth watching. There is no glamor with this largely unknown cast. They do a brilliant job worthy of awards. Zak becomes withdrawn from his girlfriend and his friends as well as his father. He paints his room black to symbolize his mourning. It isn't until a life-changing experience that determines how to live after a family tragedy.

Something Different...

[mojo0481 · 10/10 · 21 March 2006]

I got to watch this at SXSW (3-11-06), and it was certainly a breath of fresh air. Most mainstream movies are glazed over with frosting. A lot of indie movies seem to stress unnecessarily long scenes with witty sarcasm. Jumping Off Bridges seemed to contain neither of those elements, because life isn't the way it is in movies.

The technical aspects of the movie are easy to handle. The costumes certainly looked real. When I saw the dad in his classroom, I giggled because everyone one of my math teachers dressed just the same. No one in the movie had hip, trendy clothes, and none of them looked alike. The neighborhood that everyone lived in was very much a normal neighborhood. Most movies seem to want to have everyone live in $200,000 homes where everyone has expensive cars and an endless supply of money. The students weren't driving Hummers, Lexus', or Range Rovers. The camera-work was pretty decent, coming from a photographer who pays extra attention to cropping, angles, lighting situations, depth of field, etc. The sound was also very good, especially the original music -- I love piano. The editing was also very good, coming from an editor who also pays close attention to editing in movies.

If you want movies like The Notebook, Forest Gump, Dumb and Dumber, crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, then you won't like this movie.

If you want movies like Pieces of April, Broken Flowers, I Am Sam (Sean Pess should have won the Oscar that year), then you will probably like this movie.

Jumping Off Bridges on Reel 13

[eplromeo8 · 3/10 · 20 November 2008]

It stands to reason, I suppose, that a movie about depression is one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen. JUMPING OFF BRIDGES, which aired last night on Reel 13, adds insult to injury, however, by not even being a good movie about depression. It is slow, boring, quiet, sparse, ill-conceived and with one exception, poorly acted. I was counting the minutes until it was over (I suppose I could have turned it off, but something in my DNA insists that I watch movies all the way through).

Overall, the downfall of JUMPING OFF BRIDGES is that it isn't very natural in any way. The unnaturally sparse production design can be forgiven in most indies – it's a byproduct of low budget cinema, but unnatural writing/performances are less justifiable. Chiefly, it is the quietness of the film that doesn't ring true. I've always suggested less is more, but director Kat Candler took that concept to an extreme and divorced the film from any energy or any sense of life surrounding the primary characters and hence left the film devoid of the verisimilitude that I believe she was aiming for.

The film deals with four teenagers who cope with a series of tragic events, but the kids don't seem to have any acting training, which can work out fine (see THE 400 BLOWS or May 17th's RAISING VICTOR VARGAS). However, given the emotional territory that these kids were asked to explore, I wonder that it wouldn't have benefited the film to cast young actors with more experience. The film is anchored by the fine performance of Michael Emerson as the father of the main boy. He seems to be the only real actor in the film. While he is best known for his work on LOST, I personally still can't get his performance as Oscar Wilde in the 1997 off-Broadway play GROSS INDECENCY out of my head. As good as I know he is, I still see his Wilde in everything he does, which can be distracting.

Of course, none of the actors are helped by the awfully simplistic writing – there's very little complexity or depth to the scenes. It seems to me that Ms. Candler, who also served as the screenwriter, had a mission or a point to make before she had a story to tell. In other words, I suspect that her life or family has been touched with issues of depression and suicide and she had something to say about it; something to tell the world and she shaped her story around that concept. One has to be careful when approaching a project that way because one can get so wrapped up in what they want to preach that they neglect the basics of strong storytelling. The result is what you get with JUMPING OFF BRIDGES – a glorified after-school special.

(For more information on this or any other Reel 13 film, check out their website at www.reel13.org)

A Film Festival Treat

[jkxwright · 10/10 · 19 March 2006]

Rarely do I vote a film a 10. 10's for me tend to feature Ed Norton (because he's a fantastic actor) or Naomi Watts (because I'm hopelessly in love). The screening experience I had at the South by Southwest Film Festival Premier of JUMPING OFF BRIDGES was special because, from someone whose dealt with a friend committing suicide in the past, the reactions from the story's characters are appropriate, touching, and accurate. The acting was one of my favorite aspects of the film, along with the genuine feeling that these four friends are struggling with a, once unheard of and definitely unexpected, tragedy. After the film, a question was asked from the audience regarding the current state of the four main characters that the film was based on. Witnessing the director and writer of the film nearly breakdown due to the emotional toll of the lead character, Zack, passing away earlier this year, touched the hearts of the entire audience. Once again, I vote 10 out of 10 for JUMPING OFF BRIDGES because if you can relate to the story at all, then it will touch your heart...advice you on how hard, but necessary it is to cope with those sad situations that life sometimes throws you.

don't waste your time

[filmfan0303 · 21 March 2006]

This was one of three films that I saw at South by Southwest this year (2006), and by far the least enjoyable. Didn't work for a number of reasons. First, an excruciatingly slow introduction. When the teens-dealing-with-suicide theme does finally get moving, the material is, quite honestly, embarrassing. I got the impression that the author of the material was trying to address something that was over her head. I have a teenage kid, but I have a hard time picturing him or any other teenager behaving quite the same way the characters in this film behave. It's more as if an adult psyche was being projected onto a kid. Who is this film going to appeal to? A teenager who can't relate to the main characters because of their behavior, or an adult who can't relate to these characters because of their age?

Bottom line - slow, amateurish, unbelievable.

Still, kudos to the crew of this film for completing something on a presumably small budget.

not so great

[adiegirlu · 2/10 · 22 March 2006]

i had a chance to hear the director speak about the film at sxsw. she seemed like a genuine person, and i don't like giving this movie a poor review, but i'm not going to lie the thing was boring. the negative reviews i've read so far on here are a lot more accurate then the positives. the pacing is slow, the characters are hard to believe, and yeah, how did this movie even get accepted into this festival? so the movie is unflinching, big deal. original it's not. cassidy kids, another film that played at sxsw, also dealt with teenagers, and it was a complete 180 from this film in terms of originality and spirit. maybe i'm being too mean, but i agree that this film probably got into this festival because it was shot locally here in austin, tx. as an austinite, it was interesting seeing a lot of austin areas up on the screen, and a lot of the production qualities of this film were actually pretty decent. the story definitely needed work though, at an hour and a half it felt like 3 hours. bad thing when you're checking your watch constantly throughout a movie.

most rending question......why?

[saccan · 10/10 · 2 April 2006]

This movie is a stirring and heart rending portrayal of a teenager struggling to understand why a parent he loved would betray him and his family by committing suicide. all of us wonder why? Is it some sort of neural abnormality that people cannot handle their day to day challenges or is it something deeper, a lack of training and parental encouragement from birth on....that life happens and you have to discipline yourself to push on. How can a teen know....when a parent or other loved one, opts out of the struggle? None of us knows the mind of another, but the fragile and insightful look at this one teen, tells us that the human being is very complex and hard to reach. The relationships shown help us to realize that no matter what....all we have in the end is each other. Staying in touch is the most basic human instinct we have and the most precious. love is the thread for us all.

argh

[tonyj_ny · 1/10 · 22 March 2006]

I was in Austin for the SXSW music festival and stumbled onto the tail end of the SXSW film festival. This was the only film I caught, and so terrible was this schlock that I didn't even bother to take in another film at this festival. Reading other user comments, I'm having a hard time believing that people could post 10 star reviews of this film (I only reserve 10 star reviews for films with Ed Norton?). Even the negative reviews are too forgiving. Yes, the movie was a slow amateur hour descent into boredom, but it also insults the subject matter with characters and situations that only exist in the minds of pretentious film school students who want to make something "deep and meaningful." The story, in a nutshell, deals with how a group of teens deal with the death of a parent. What can you say when you find yourself laughing unintentionally at the ridiculous situations and unbelievable plot points that ensue? I won't bore you with the details. I can't imagine this movie hitting mainstream or even the art house circuit, and of that you should be thankful.

I'd Call This Charming, But...

[starrywisdom · 9/10 · 20 July 2008]

...it's about suicide. So I'll call it compelling and deeply affecting instead.

I caught this a month or two back on our local PBS station's Saturday night indie movie slot, and was glad I stuck with it. Michael Emerson's presence was a pure gift, and it was so nice to see him as someone other than crazy Ben Linus, King of the "Lost" Island. He was excellent as the well-meaning but essentially clueless widower father, and the young actors were good as well.

The only character who grated on me was the young girl, Grove. She just didn't seem real or even particularly interesting, and at times I found her deeply irritating. The character, not the actress, who did a good job.

But the music. When Sufjan Stevens's "For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti" played all the way through over what was all but a real-time progress from home to school, I cried like a little girl. A gorgeous, moving song, used brilliantly.

I'll be buying this on DVD.

Some decent acting encapsulated in an unoriginal narrative

[tab78745 · 2/10 · 20 March 2006]

Saw this movie on 3/16/06 at SxSW film festival.

Clichéd and unoriginal narrative punctuated with a few decent performances. I recognized Michael Emerson from various guest bits on network TV shows, namely "Lost." Interesting that he'd slum it in this smaller production, but he did a good job. All in all, performances aside, it's well worn material that's overdrawn and melodramatic. With the goal of most independent films being eventual distribution, I have a hard time picturing exactly what kind of crowd/distributor this would appeal to. Lifetime Network? WE? I dunno. Shot in Austin with what I presume was a lot of Austin talent, no surprise that this film premiered at a film festival based in Austin, TX.

Sensitive and thought provoking

[talldrinknyc · 9/10 · 18 October 2007]

Few films handle the difficulties and complexities of teenager-dom as well as this one. Canlder has a unique ability to imbue her characters with depth and sensitivity without being overly sentimental or cliché. Great soundtrack. These characters are real. Lacking the false glamour and pretentious irony-filled self awareness of many teens in recent American films, Canlder's cast instantly brings you back to what it was to be in high school--the good and the not so good. The plot is wonderfully spare in its exposition, and the focus is on letting the characters stand on their own, complete with their imperfections and secrets. An excellent dialog starter for topics that many people simply don't want to go near or don't know how to begin.

A must see!

[troydidonato · 10/10 · 18 October 2007]

This movie is not only worth seeing it is in my opinion a must see. Rarely do I see a film that tackles the topic of suicide and the aftermath of what a suicide creates like Kat Candler's "Jumping off Bridges". I have had several opportunities to view the film and I have always been amazed at how this film gets people talking. In my mind that is what a good film does; it gets your mind moving and you mouth open and your eyes a little tear filled. OK, the tears aren't a requirement for a good film but this film does all that. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to see this film and to share it with others. If you are in the market for a film that will create discussion about one of societies last know taboos "suicide" then this is your movie. Watch it!